Xplore Group optimizes supply at Vion Food Group

Transporters supplying live animals to VION Food Group’s production locations in Emstek, Germany, reserve time slots online. Thanks to Xplore Group’s reservation tool, waiting times at the gate have dropped dramatically.

Vion Food is an international meat producer with production locations in the Netherlands and Germany and sales offices in sixteen countries worldwide.
VION Food Group manages different production locations for pork, beef and derived products for retail, foodservice and the processed meat industries.
Long waiting lines with trucks were a regular sight at the production location in Emstek. These traffic jams raised concern with transporters and animal rights organizations.

 

Xplore Group built an online application to solve the problem. The tool divides the opening hours of the production locations into time slots. The number of available slots fits to the production capacity of the location. Customers go online and reserve a time slot.

 

The solution offered immediate results. The traffic congestion at the gate has disappeared. This has considerably reduced the animals’ stress level, since they spend less time on the trucks. Transporters are saving time, while the production location increased its planning efficiency. Thanks to the online solution, the production location is capable of matching supply and production capacity.

“The new system brings benefits on many levels. The shorter waiting times result in a cost reduction for the transporters. At the same time, we reduce the animals’ stress level and the traffic jams are gone as well.”

Numbers

  • 40 suppliers
  • 152 (flexible) time slots per day
  • 600 animals per hour
  • 11.000 animals per day

Xploration

VION Food Group needed a solution to streamline the supply of animals to the production locations.

Our solution

An online tool to reserve time slots for the supply of animals to the production locations.

Integration

  • Vaadin 7 .4.7 and Spring
  • Vaadin Custom Widgets
  • Spring
  • Spring data / Hibernate
  • Spring security
  • Oracle database
  • Jackson
  • Junit / Mockito / hsqldb
  • Java 6
  • Servlet 2.4
  • Apache PDFBox
  • GlassFish server

Result

Transporters gain time, the production location benefits from a more efficient production planning, the animals experience less stress. Following the application’s successful implementation for the production location in Emstek, VION Food Group decided to roll out the tool at all its German sites.