Britain's largest UK- farmer-owned business First Milk says it expects to optimize production across its cheese division sites nation-wide and to integrate all key business processes when it goes live with a $3million IFS Applications ERP system.

According to Manufacturing Computer Solutions, the system is due to be deployed in the eight creameries and packing plants over the next nine months, handling warehouse management, financials, forecasting and payroll.

First Milk says it wants centralized control of operations and a new level of visibility across its entire enterprise and supply chain. It will also get real-time reporting on cheese production, maturation, packaging and dispatch, enabling the company to respond with much greater agility to variations in milk supply and demand.

First Milk group head of IT Alan Hutchison says IFS was chosen for its scale of integration, ease of use and apparent speed of implementation, as well as its functionality. He also cites the system's suitability for the cheese supply chain, and in particular its product lifecycle management.

"The central challenge of cheese production is accurately forecasting demand 18 months out from delivery to customers, matching this with supply from farmers, and keeping track of the different maturation levels of thousands of tonnes of cheese," says Hutchison.

" In First Milk's case, this challenge is even greater because most of our customers are major supermarkets, which only provide one day's notice for orders. The ability of IFS Applications to handle the company's long-term and short-term production planning requirements within one system was a key reason behind our decision to implement it."