Morgan Foods Supports Greater Innovation and Expansion With SAP ERP Upgrade

Challenge

Meeting Customer Demand With More Efficient Processes

From tomato soup to baked beans, many of the nation’s favorite supermarket-branded canned goods are made by Morgan Foods. Founded in 1899, it’s one of the largest three soup manufacturers in the US. With  over 800 employees, it currently focuses on private-label canned soups, beans, sauces and broths.

The company’s emphasis on quality, consistency and research and development has led to rapid growth over the last few years. As a result, Morgan Foods suddenly found itself struggling to keep up with customer demand. In some cases it had to produce extra inventory just to ensure it could meet customer service levels.

To enable greater scalability and ensure it can continue to meet demand, the company recognized that it needed to update its manufacturing model and SAP implementation. To support its growth and new product lines, Morgan Foods was keen to improve visibility into the supply chain, leverage additional SAP features to boost efficiency and simplify the SAP user interface for users.

Solution

Leveraging SAP S/4HANA Functionality

In October 2019, Morgan Foods decided to partner with Hitachi Vantara to upgrade its SAP ECC 6.0 EHP7 landscape to the latest version based on SAP S/4HANA. Morgan Foods chose to work with Hitachi Vantara due to prior work and a willingness to partner on more than 12 key initiatives leading up to the upgrade project.

The project involved migrating to SAP S/4HANA, deploying a new user experience, and implementing IBP Supply to help improve planning and drive manufacturing efficiency. The team also added new functionality for production planning and scheduling, enhanced product pricing capabilities, and adopted new embedded analytics capabilities using Fiori and Analysis for Office.

Following the eight-month project, the new S/4HANA and IBP solutions were launched virtually with help from Hitachi Vantara’s global team during the COVID-19 crisis. As part of the launch, the team introduced new learning tools to boost user adoption and confidence in using the new functionality. Steve Hankins, CFO at Morgan Foods, appreciated the contributions of the Hitachi Vantara team to support the transition from ECC to S/4HANA. In a recent SAP Insider presentation, he shared how key project execution tools helped in the effort.

Morgan Foods now has enhanced functionality across accounting, planning, production, sales, warehouse management, shipping, product lifecycle management, quality management and procurement.

Outcome

Supporting Greater Expansion and Innovation

Morgan Foods now has a modern platform to support innovation and strategic growth. With the enhanced ERP functionality, the company has made improvements to warehouse management operations, the supply chain and forecasting and planning. As a result, it’s able to meet customer demand, delivering high quality products on time even during peak seasons and the global pandemic, while reducing inventory requirements.

Better data and greater transparency also enables Morgan Foods’ management team to report on and analyze business information more easily. In addition, with cloud-based hosting, the company benefits from predictable monthly costs.

“By unlocking greater value from our SAP ERP system, we’ve been able to maximize efficiency, enhance visibility and make better business decisions,” says Hankins. “The new solution will support innovation and help us maximize customer satisfaction as we continue to grow.”