Long Clawson

Leading Craft Cheesemaker moves to one core business system as a driver for business process change and full financial integration!

Long Clawson has deployed Microsoft Dynamics NAV and TNP's nHanced 365 products to optimise efficiency across all departments. Long Clawson is achieving efficiency gains by automating manual processes, improving productivity through improved working practices and optimising inventory management across both of their sites.

Although best known for their Blue Stilton, Long Clawson also produce a number of other delicious English cheeses and cheese products, such as Blue Shropshire, Rutland Red and a range of sweet & savoury cheese blends. They take pride in crafting 100% British cheese, using century-old expertise alongside innovative techniques to make each one of their products truly unique.

Long Clawson Dairy operates across two sites: the main production takes place in the village of Long Clawson in Leicestershire where they make the Stilton and other great cheese – it’s also is the dispatch location for all of their product range. The Bottesford site on the Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire border is responsible for the blended cheese products. A common approach to the business processes at both was adopted.

"Stock control is a must for our business"

Luke Goddard, Financial Director at Long Clawson explained this during the implementation: ‘Right now we have no idea what stock we have used to make our cheese until we do a full stock take and we do this every month. Proper stock control is a must for our business’. So TNP implemented full warehousing with container tracking to enable a trolley like the one below to be counted or moved easily on a handheld scanner.

Furthermore ad hoc stock enquiries, corrections and even transfers to the other site at Bottesford are all done either on the handheld devices or with equivalent simple screens in the NAV Client.

The milk intake deliveries from farmers is a crucial first step on the way to making a great cheese. This is managed by an automated process to import the deliveries by tanker. The next step is to ensure that the quality control is done before confirming the contents into a silo where it can be used. TNP’s nHanced Quality Control module is quick to use and supports all of the lab tests and inspections that are required.

Tiles, Production Control and Workflow

Using the modern user experience from nHanced 365, expertise in manufacturing control and planning gained over many years, workflow for item setup and purchasing and, of course, alternative units of measures for pricing and catch weights, a system has been implemented that is both intuitive and fits the business processes at Long Clawson. The role centres have been built with nHanced Panels and Tiles, directing end users to the daily tasks essential for the smooth running of the business.

TNP’s Food & Fresh Produce ERP solution gives easy lot generation on purchase receipts and on production output, allowing Long Clawson to trace a lot’s journey all the way through the business at the touch of a button.

The simplicity of the solution ensures that the recipes can be in one unit of measure but the actual weights captured by the weigh scales are scanned when the packed cheese is produced. This information then flows seamlessly to the sales line, ensuring the correct price for the customer.

With growth in mind

The deployment of TNP's Food & Fresh Produce ERP with nHanced 365 gives Long Clawson full ‘catch weight’ functionality, full lot traceability from purchase and manufacturing to despatch, streamlined workflows, stops duplication of data entry and enables the company to reduce operational costs. Additionally, the increased visibility of fully integrated daily financial transactions is delivering a single centralised view, enabling better decision-making across the business and therefore allowing planned growth for the future.