Software system manages salmon supply chain

Norwegian company Marine Harvest, the world's largest farmed salmon processor with operations around the globe - including Scotland and Ireland - is using sophisticated software systems to manage its supply chain.

The growth cycle for salmon is about three years, which is a long time from a quality control and traceability perspective. During this time, every fish cage must be constantly monitored for numbers, average weight, feed, vaccinations and treatments. With a global distribution of salmon "there are a lot of things that can go wrong", admits Marine Harvest's IT manager Arnt Mjøen.

Consequently, the company uses a system called Qmarine as its total quality management system. The software concentrates on food quality, food safety, fish wellbeing, environmental responsibility, social responsibility and quality assurance.

"It is not easy to implement common standards through six or seven business units with cultural differences," says Mjøen.

With each of its fish farms producing between 3,000 and 5,000t of salmon, obtaining production data for the financial system was a major problem before Marine Harvest installed its software systems. "It used to take a disproportionate amount of time to prepare monthly accounts with a good overview of value and stock," says Mjøen.

The company now uses Lawson's M3 enterprise resource planning system suite of applications as its backbone. Lawson has partnered with Mercatus, an IT solutions provider for the livestock industries, and in some plants it also works with another partner, Scase, which provides manufacturing execution systems.

Using the traceability elements within the software, it is possible to track salmon right down to box level within minutes rather than the days required previously, says Mjøen. "So, if we need to do a recall, we can stop everything before boxes reach customers."