Digital for the Primary Sector: Oceania Dairy Limited
Client
Oceania Dairy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of parent company Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Company Limited (Yili Group), is an export-focused South Island dairy company with a state of the art manufacturing plant in Glenavy, South Canterbury, capable of producing 47,000 tonnes of powder per year. Recent development means the site now also runs infant formula blending and canning lines, UHT production lines, and produces AMF, handling more than 630 million litres of milk per year and generating export revenue in excess of $700 million.
Project start and completion dates
August 2018 – ongoing support for RPA Initiatives
Background
The dairy industry faces a number of challenges with environmental impact and food safety always on the agenda and of interest to end customers. International interest in the sustainability, quality and trust of New Zealand products is important to the industry and to Oceania Dairy, who have an important part to play in ensuring the Yili brand continues to be the most trusted food brand in the world.
The challenge
Oceania Dairy recognised there were some inefficiencies in their current processes and that these processes were resource-consuming. These time-consuming processes could delay shipping products from the manufacturing site in a timely fashion, incurring delays in delivering the goods to their customers, resulting in additional costs. With an ever-growing range of products as well as increased production, the challenges were only going to increase.
They were looking for a different way of working and identified eligibility documentation required by the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) as an area for change. That’s when Deloitte was brought in to provide support.
Our approach
Deloitte took a multi-faceted approach, aware that they needed to provide a solution both suited to the client’s present needs and capable of being built upon over time. It also had to be supported by Oceania Dairy’s existing internal IT team and external IT support vendors. As a result, a key aspect of the project was creating a combined team to ensure continued knowledge transfer and shared expertise.
The solution aimed to bring together data from both the processing plant control system and manufacturing system. This data needed to be processed to enable the business users to produce the documentation required for MPI, as well as tracing products forwards and backwards through production and other processing loops.
The solution itself was built using Oceania Dairy’s preferred technologies and ensured that the skills of the existing team were utilised and further developed. The data warehouse was built with Microsoft’s Azure SQL Server managed instance, with SSRS and XML used to meet the initial report and extract requirements. Subsequently, Power BI has been used by the Oceania Dairy team to produce dashboards, further expanding the use of the initial build.
The Deloitte team also worked with the client to facilitate digital technology, factoring in risk management, regulatory requirements, processes and standard operating procedure changes.
The impact
The project culminated in the delivery of a data warehouse and reports which have enabled the business to access information more quickly and reliably. Oceania Dairy have also continued to reap further benefits from improved data availability by utilising Power BI to deliver dashboards.
Oceania Dairy are continuing to expand their digital capability, working with Deloitte to further develop the data warehouse and review their system’s suitability for Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Started with a long term view, the initial process was just the beginning as Oceania Dairy and Deloitte continue to work together on a journey towards comprehensive business intelligence.
