Mademoiselle Desserts Implement IFS Applications 10 with Cedar Bay to help them streamline their processes and provide real time visibility across their business. Read the case study to find out more!

Who are they?

Mademoiselle Desserts UK belongs to a group of bakeries who produce delicious desserts and cakes to pudding lovers everywhere. Mademoiselle Desserts Group has sites in France, The Netherlands, and the UK. The French roots date back to 1984 when the first bakery was set up in the Dordogne region. Since then, the group has built its reputation with market leading New Product Development and a focus on maintaining the highest standards from their products to their people. Although Mademoiselle Desserts only entered the UK in 2012, they have over two hundred years of experience baking delicious products between the three UK sites.

What challenges did they face?

In common with many ERP implementations MMD wanted to streamline processes and provide real time visibility across their business to enable the Senior Leadership team to make more informed decisions to run the business. All three sites were running on different systems for the processing and management of data and had a lack of visibility throughout their facilities on what was happening in real-time. Each site used different software solutions and had a large reliance on standalone Excel and Access databases which were not standardised across the sites, therefore they did not have a simple way to consolidate data at MMD UK level to make business decisions effectively.

Nothing could have prepared us for the challenge that fell across the whole world. When COVID-19 caused a global pandemic, lockdown became a new state of living. Mademoiselle Desserts UK had to close down for three months, issue furlough to employees and use their frozen products to deliver to their customers who were still open. The factory shutdown meant a temporary project closure, however when the factory opened it’s doors again it was full steam ahead and their demand was high, showing the dawn to a new way of working.

How did Cedar Bay meet the challenge?

To remove the use of standalone spreadsheet processes and improve the visibility of how the business is running, the Cedar Bay team worked with MMD to implement IFS Applications 10, the newest version available at the first site in Corby. The implementation consisted of the full ERP suite to use the core IFS processes. For phases 2 and 3, this core solution was rolled out to the two other sites. This has created a standardised process for all the UK sites, allowing the teams to collaborate more effectively. Throughout the implementation, MMD had some of their staff on furlough due to the global pandemic. This meant that when they came back to work, they were introduced to a completely new system. The Cedar Bay team trained the key users in a ‘train the trainer’ approach so that they could pass on their knowledge to others as and when they came back.

From a technical viewpoint Cedar Bay provided consultancy to migrate the data from the legacy systems providing a managed hosted solution for MMD. In conjunction to implementing IFS Applications 10, the project implemented CB Apps 4 which provides simplified mobile data capture across the factory. In the Production Area MMD required a simple and easy to use automated data collection solution for the bakery that could be integrated into the ERP solution and directly connected to the scales. The aim of this part of the project was to facilitate the accurate and fast-moving flow of ingredients from Goods-In, via the warehouse and bakery, all the way through to Goods-Out and Shipment.

The Results

Creating a team of expert users, the company have installed a high level of knowledge throughout their departments, allowing flexibility and speeding up decision making. With these new processes in place, traceability within MMD has now been simplified, with the benefits of lot batch tracking, alongside reducing their reliance on Excel throughout the business. The team at Mademoiselle Desserts went from strength to strength, they were endlessly committed even when they faced adversity, management remained honest with all team members allowing positive flows of communication.

Read the Full Case Study Here