JBT Marel Corporation
06/23/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 06/23/2026 05:38
C-Suite insights: Unlocking ROI with MES and ERP in food manufacturing
23 Jun 2026
C-Suite insights: Unlocking ROI with MES and ERP in food manufacturing
What is the gap between your financial system and your factory floor costing you?
Most food processors running an ERP believe they have solid financial visibility with procurement, accounts payable, invoicing, and inventory all accessible. Which is why the instinctive response from finance leadership to the suggestion to add a Manufacturing Execution System (MES), is predictable: we already have a system. The response is understandable, but ERP alone, or ERP and MES systems that don't work together, can result in significantly reduced ROI.
The ERP handles both ends of the process - purchasing and sales. But what happens in the middle? That's where margins are made or lost.
Darren Cook, Software Sales Manager
JBT Marel
If you're ready to make more from the investments you've made there are two questions to answer: Can the technology you have see what's happening inside your plant? And, if you have an MES, is it and your ERP working together to turn that visibility into financial performance?
The gap in the middle
An ERP is designed to manage the financial edges of production; what you buy and what you sell. How raw material becomes the finished product sits outside of the ERP scope.
Yield variance, production overruns, downgraded product sold at a discount, short-shipped orders, are numbers that don't show up in your ERP as a single line item, but surface later as margin erosion.
Case example: A large, multi-site seafood business was reporting an overall yield of 65 % from their ERP. That single, blended figure masked that yield for some species was running at 40 % others at 70%. Without line-of-sight into the plant, management had no way to know how inefficient their operation was. They couldn't see the details that would have shown them where the process was broken. While the financial situation looked acceptable at 65 %, the reality was that systemic overfeeding and compounding inefficiencies in production was creating unnecessary losses.
When the data that measures production, quantity, yield, efficiency, and material quality against orders doesn't feed into the ERP, decision making is driven by a false understanding of profit margins.
When both MES and ERP work together
MES fills the gap the ERP cannot. It manages production at floor level - scheduling, yield tracking, traceability, quality, and real-time output data. On its own, MES are operationally valuable. Connected to an ERP, they become a strategic financial tool.
When MES and ERP share data, orders feed into production from the ERP and completed inventory data flows back out automatically, accurately, and in real time.
- Leadership gains a consolidated view across the full production system including yields, and products available to sell
- Finance can see the actual cost of production
- Sales knows what stock exists and can commit with confidence - getting the right product to the right customer
- Operations can identify where product is being downgraded through overproduction or where orders are consistently short
Every food processor already has a finance system. The advantage MES adds is insight into what happens between purchasing and the sale. And that insight is where better decisions get made.
Darren Cook
By providing accurate, real-time data from operations to your ERP, rather than reconciling estimates after the fact the investment you've already made works harder.
How ROI compounds with business growth
Evaluating capital investment for MES and ERP integration should be done in the same manner as it is for any capital case. When you account for yield losses, production inefficiencies, discounting over-produced stock, and the management time spent reconciling data; what does it cost to operate without integrated systems?
The business case for integration of ERP and MES systems strengthens as volume, product complexity, and market reach increase. At a single, smaller site, manual reconciliation is time consuming but manageable. But, the cost of operating in this way scales with the size and scope of the business, for example, manual reconciliation across multiple sites, species, or product lines takes many hours, can result in human error, and usually only provides data after the fact.
Integration of the two systems also positions businesses for future technologies and industry changes. AI-driven demand forecasting, automated production scheduling, and expansion into new markets all depend on clean, connected data flowing between systems. Organizations that align their MES and ERP now are building the infrastructure for those capabilities.
Leadership decisions
System alignment is a capital allocation question, not an IT question. Executives who treat MES and ERP integration as an operational detail, keeping systems siloed rather than utilizing the benefits of shared data, often find that the financial performance they expect from their technology investments isn't materializing as expected.
An ERP is the financial system of record. But the accuracy, and timeliness of the data it is fed is the key to it operating with true financial visibility, rather than financial assumption.
MES and ERP working together remove friction, reduce implementation risk, and deliver a return on the combined investment that neither system can achieve alone.
If you're evaluating where your technology investments are and aren't delivering, we have experts with a deep understanding of your industry ready to have the conversation. Reach out today.
Read also
- Beyond expectations: Morgan Beef's journey with Marel software
- Data-driven beef production: John Dee's digital transformation
- Trident Seafoods: Processing with Innova
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JBT Marel Corporation published this content on June 23, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on June 23, 2026 at 11:38 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]