Irish Dairy Board Awarded for Supply Chain System Innovation

By the end of July, processes in the supply chain will have been streamlined such that the IDB’s business will be linked electronically with customers across diverse cultures in over 90 countries and managed in real-time.

14/07/09 The Irish Dairy Board was recently awarded international recognition for its innovative development and installation of an E-commerce hub streamlining its national and international B2B enterprise. The awards were presented in California by Sterling Commerce, an AT&T company, and other recipients included Sony Europe and Glaxo Smith Kline.

The IDB’s award citation, Managing Diverse Partner Communities read: “The Irish Dairy Board, Ireland’s biggest exporter of dairy products, leveraged real-time, electronic commerce to create and deliver a streamlined, real-time supply chain to enhance its global business made up of hundreds of suppliers and customers. The company is an innovator in its industry and has demonstrated best practice in implementing solutions to better connect, communicate and collaborate with its customers, partners and suppliers.”

Since its formation in 1961, the Irish Dairy Board has continually responded to the ever changing business environment. In terms of technology, the IDB has been to the fore-front reinventing supply chain systems to meet its particular dairy product needs and latterly developing an ambitious e-commerce system in order to maintain and grow its global business. The Board, which owns the internationally established Kerrygold brand, has an annual turnover in excess of €2 billion. The business is 24/7, operated by three divisions: Consumer Foods, Food Ingredients and its US specialty foods distribution arm, Distribution Plus Inc.

Dairy products have a limited lifetime and require particularly efficient management from manufacture through to consumer purchase. By the end of July, processes in the supply chain will have been streamlined such that the IDB’s business, comprised of dairy product producers, storage, shipping and ancillary service providers both at home and abroad, will be linked electronically with customers across diverse cultures in over 90 countries and managed in real-time. Achieving this has required the cooperation of all involved and will ultimately ensure that supply chain costs are maintained at the lowest possible level.

The new system provides the IDB with a secure network in which customer orders, supplier invoices, stock movements, real-time tracking and reporting all come together to provide end-to-end visibility throughout the supply chain to shelf, ultimately meeting the demands of all parties involved in the IDB dairy food business.