Infor is pleased to announce that Kirin Brewery acquired the Infor solutions to manage their operations

Kirin Brewery Company, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, is one of Japan’s most prominent and respected breweries, and among the top ten brewers in the world*.  Its history dates back to 1888 and in that time, the name Kirin has become synonymous in Japan and around the world with beer of the highest quality.   Kirin Brewery of America LLC oversees Kirin’s beer business in North America, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kirin Brewery Co., Ltd.

The brewing industry faces enormous scheduling and planning challenges. Beer manufacturers must determine how to schedule numerous production streams for vast quantities and wide varieties of beer. There are also routing constraints, long fermenting and aging times, tank complexities, variable changeovers, floating bottlenecks and limited material availability and storage capacity. There are also a vast array of planning challenges that come into play when optimizing beer production such as the balancing of supply and demand while considering material and logistical costs, manufacturing capacities, labor costs and other production constraints.

Infor Food & Beverage Essentials were designed to enable the beverage industry to balance multiple variables such as seasonal supply and market demand as well as manage a multitude of production and capacity constraints.

The Infor solution enables more efficient production by providing:

• Improved customer service and due date performance
• One centralized plan for distribution and production
• Improved synchronization and visibility through the entire process
• Optimal tank scheduling and management
• Recognition of unique process industry-specific constraints providing optimized plans and schedules
• Standardized planning and scheduling processes and practices
• Tools for “what-if” analysis

Results

Infor is proud to serve some of the largest and most respected companies in the beverage industry such as Molson, Coca-Cola, Grolsch, Fosters, Interbrew, Anheuser-Busch, Scottish Courage and Miller Brewing.  Here’s what industry analysts and Infor customers have to say about our capabilities:

“We eliminated a tank a week from the previous standard production scheduling plan - saving us millions of dollars.” - Heineken

“We now have a clear picture of which beer to produce in which tanks and in which sequence to make best use of our resources to satisfy customer demand at the lowest possible production cost.” – Scottish Courage
“Infor offers a portfolio of process manufacturing solutions (e.g. Process ERP, SCM, collaboration) with particular strength in planning and optimization.” – Meta Group – March

Infor’s software is specialized in the Brewing Industry Vertical, and 5 of the 9 main world's largest brewers use Infor to manage their operations.