Ritchey has productivity tagged with Access Supply Chain

Emley, UK - 29th March 2007 - Agricultural manufacturer Ritchey plc has introduced major productivity gains by integrating its Access Supply Chain solution with an online ordering system.

Founded in 1972, Ritchey is based near Ripon, N Yorkshire.  It makes cattle and sheep tags and a range of other livestock management and healthcare products.  Total traceability of livestock has become a big issue since the BSE and foot and mouth outbreaks of recent years, resulting in a unique serial number having to be obtained from the government agriculture ministry, DEFRA, for each and every tag the company ships.

Since Ritchey can process up to 900 orders a day, efficiency is vital, so Access Supply Chain has worked with Ritchey to build an interface between the Access system and the company's website.  Previously a cumbersome three-way process saw order information entered by Ritchey sales staff onto a desktop PC database, re-entered into the Access ERP system for manufacturing planning and again into the DEFRA registration system.  The three systems were rarely fully synchronised - the desktop database for example was updated only when tags had physically been despatched. 

Now sales order entry takes place only once and it is the customer who enters the data - agricultural merchants order on behalf of farmers online and the data is sent simultaneously and automatically to DEFRA and the Access Supply Chain system.

Tony Wheeldon, Ritchey's group IT manager, commented, "Now the customer has ownership of the data; the website guides them carefully through the order process, so by and large errors are avoided but if there are any problems (with herd numbering for instance) they are referred directly back to the customer from DEFRA; it happens almost instantaneously.

"We've got complete visibility all the way from sales order to despatch, which we didn't have before, and we have completely eliminated the effort required for inputting data; there are no time delays and the potential for error has all but disappeared.  It's a massive productivity gain for us."

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