Food industry operations and cost management require special tools at every level, including corporate planning and budgeting, sales and marketing, and day-to-day plant operations. Integration of all of these viewpoints with the flexibility to deal with food industry issues distinguishes Parity Manufacturing from traditional approaches to manufacturing management.

Cost Planning & Modeling

The Parity integrated manufacturing and cost management tools provide managers and supervisors with powerful tools to monitor the efficiency of the processes, work centers, and departments for which they are responsible. Executives, sales, marketing and financial managers work with verifiable product costing views to track profitability and conduct more effective market planning. Integrated accountability for resources used, inventories, and manufacturing variances assures that all users of the system are making decisions based on the same, accurate information.

Corporate cost models may be defined independently of detailed product formulations for production planning and plant-level cost management. Phased introduction and enhancement of costing models and methods allow your organization to learn from the system and use that knowledge to improve processes.

Retroactive Costing

Parity Manufacturing allows authorized users to compute costs on command, rather than with each transaction. This reduces the accumulation of cost accounting noise typically found in the general ledger. With Parity, you decide when you need to update financial entries for costing and if you want to reverse and restate prior postings with updated or corrected formulations. As with all Parity Enterprise modules, any financial period can be closed or reopened (with the appropriate authorization) for retroactive adjustment. However the accounting is done, your business planning team will be able to rely on costing models and data that can be corrected, refined and extended over time.

Process Manufacturing

Parity Manufacturing supports primary processing with multiple outputs, co-product and by-products, as well as processing such as blending, mixing, and packaging. Costs may be either fixed or related to inputs, outputs, and time in process (set-up and clean-up). Cost allocations for multiple outputs may be based on relative quantities, relative values or user defined percentages.

Resource Cost Management

For easy and efficient cost management, a central cost reference maintains effective dates for all resource cost standards. Manufactured items, including intermediate products, may be assigned their unit costs by reference to a formula.

Resources in manufacturing formulas may be associated with process cost centers, defined to any level of detail necessary to reflect the responsibility and accountability of management for manufacturing operations. Cost centers may be reflected in the general ledger for verification of cost standards, formulations, and analysis of variance.

Enterprise Financial Framework

In combination with the Parity Enterprise Financial Model, Parity Food Cost Management drives a unique and powerful financial framework. The financial significance of every business activity and transaction is reflected in a business model optimized for the way food manufacturing companies work. Your financial model is tailored to the specifics of your raw materials and products, manufacturing methods, distribution channels, business processes, and key factors for management oversight. The result is financial accountability for day-to-day operations and profit analysis by product, customer, market and other dimensions all supported by verifiable information. Managers work with the information they need to lower costs while corporate executives have credible information for effective planning and strategic decisions.