Increasing Efficiency in Mowi’s Processing Systems

M3 consultants from Sweden, Iceland, the United States, and Canada met together in Surrey February 3-7 to correct and improve some of the processes at Port Hardy Primary Processing Plant (PHPP) and VAP Surrey. 

Systems Administrator Jeremy Hoover says the gathering was effective in identifying improvements concerning recording the numbers of fish being processed and how Mowi’s final product is reported and is made ready for the company’s sales department. 

Companies represented included Elvenite, CodelT and Marel. 

“The overall results will not be completely noticed immediately as the changes to the processes affects not only Processing and Sales, but also the Finance department and how the fish being processed and the final product is reported to M3,” Hoover says. “But currently with the changes and results implemented, we can already see that the processes are more streamlined at the plant.  

“In addition to these upgrades, real-time sales is just around the corner which will position Mowi well as there is growth on the consumer products side of the business.” 

The workshop included developing Advanced Shipping Notices at VAP Surrey, reporting of how may boxes are on a pallet and how many pallets are on a shipment, the nominal weights when a box is re-created, and the creation of another warehouse within Mowi’s M3 system. 

“These were issues that were discovered after M3 was implemented in May 2019,” he says, adding, “We managed to work through these issues, which was time consuming, but in the end, this workshop will prevent a lot of additional hours at each month-end.” 

Hoover has been with Mowi Canada West since 2014 as an IT Systems Administrator based out of Campbell River, supporting PHPP, Klemtu Primary Processing Plant, and VAP Surrey Secondary Processing Plant.  

The development of the workshop was a joint effort between Mowi’s IT department and the consultants, and was a timely exercise after running M3 for nearly 10 months. It was time to re-examine the processes and try to make the processes more user-friendly, and the reporting more streamlined. 

Hoover notes VAP Surrey is already seeing a progressive change with the ease of their internal processes and the flow of day to day tasks.  

“This includes how finance notices the consumption of raw material in M3 and how it is consumed across each production order,” he adds. “In addition, they also see a change in how their final product is reported to M3 and how it flows into their new M3 warehouse.” 

Plant Manager Jason Swanson states, “VAP Surrey employees can now assign incoming products to final products, which is critical to the traceability infrastructure. The hope is to also simplify the process which will make reporting much more efficient.”