Food & Beverage Distributor — FEFO Shelf-Life Management & Compliance
Customer Background
The client is a food and beverage distributor managing a diverse portfolio of products across multiple brands. Operating across Finance, Sales, Purchasing, Inventory, Warehouse, and compliance-driven processes like lot tracking and shelf-life management, they completed a 5-month implementation with a 4-person team to enhance traceability, compliance, and operational efficiency.
Industry
The Challenge
The client was a major food and beverage distributor handling multiple international and domestic brands across dry goods, chilled products, beverages, and confectionery, supplying supermarket chains, food service operators, and independent retailers.
Shelf-life management was critical—products had varying expiration windows, and the client needed to enforce FEFO (First Expired, First Out) picking to minimize waste and ensure compliance with retail customer requirements for minimum remaining shelf life at delivery.
Traceability was non-negotiable—in the event of a product recall, the client needed to trace any item from the supplier’s lot number through their warehouse to every customer who received that lot, within hours rather than days. The legacy system did not support multi-brand costing and profitability analysis—finance could not determine margin by brand, product category, or customer tier.
Our Approach
- We conducted detailed discovery workshops with warehouse operations, procurement, sales, and finance teams.
- Special emphasis on shelf-life rules by product category, customer-specific delivery requirements (major retailers requiring minimum 60% remaining shelf life), and recall procedures.
- The solution was designed around BC’s lot tracking with expiration date enforcement, combined with warehouse management for FEFO picking.
- Custom reports and alerting were built to proactively flag stock approaching expiry.
- Integration with EDI trading partners was scoped to automate purchase orders, ASNs, and invoicing with major retail customers.
Solution Delivered
- Lot Tracking & Shelf-Life: Item Tracking with mandatory lot number and expiration date capture at goods receipt. FEFO picking enforcement in warehouse operations. Customer-specific shelf-life rules—automated validation at shipment preventing dispatch of stock that does not meet minimum remaining shelf-life requirements. Expiry alerting—automated reports flagging stock within 30/60/90-day expiry windows. Short-dated stock management workflows for discounted channels and write-off processing.
- Recall & Traceability: End-to-end traceability from supplier lot number through warehouse receipt, storage, picking, and customer shipment. Recall simulation capability—identify all affected customers and quantities within minutes. Item tracing reports covering both forward (lot → customers) and backward (customer complaint → supplier lot) directions.
- Warehouse & Distribution: Zone-based warehouse management separating ambient, chilled, and controlled-temperature storage areas. Directed put-away based on product category, shelf-life, and zone assignment. Pick-by-wave processing for high-volume retail orders with optimized pick paths. Cross-docking for fast-moving products requiring minimal warehouse dwell time.
- Finance & Commercial: Multi-dimensional P&L reporting by brand, product category, customer tier, and sales channel. Landed cost calculation incorporating freight, customs, and handling charges for imported brands. Rebate and promotional pricing management for retail chain agreements. Full AP automation with 3-way matching and payment proposal processing. EDI integration with major retail customers for purchase orders, ASNs, and invoicing.
Key Outcomes
- Product waste reduced by approximately 35% through FEFO enforcement and proactive expiry alerting.
- Recall response time reduced from days to under 2 hours for complete lot trace across all affected customers.
- First-time brand-level and customer-tier profitability analysis enabled data-driven pricing.
- Order accuracy improved to over 99% through directed picking and barcode validation.
- Zero shelf-life violations with major retail customers post go-live.
- Month-end close reduced by approximately 40% through automated cost allocation and EDI reconciliation.
Technology Stack
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (SaaS), Custom AL Extensions (shelf-life rules, recall tracing), EDI Integration (retail customers), Warehouse Management with FEFO, Power BI for brand profitability and inventory aging dashboards.
Use when
Prospect is in food/beverage distribution, pharmaceuticals, or any industry with shelf-life, lot tracking, or regulatory traceability requirements.
Client Testimonial
