The National Cooperative of Milk Producers (Conaprole) in Uruguay received 785 million liters of milk (1999 figure) from its 3020 producers, which were processed in the twelve industrial plants distributed across the country.
The dairy milk is poured into refrigerated tanks and is then collected by cistern trucks that take it to Conaprole’s industrial plants. From there it is pasteurized and processed into other products.
All of the milk collection operative, it’s quality systems, it’s valuation, the web payment to/from Cooperating partners (producers), etc., are managed from a process composed by a series of systems developed in GeneXus, called Fresh Milk Management (FMM), which communicates with the ERP R/3 of SAP, which administrates the other areas of the enterprise.
One of the systems FMM integrates, called Info-Rut, interacts with a Geographical Information System (GIS) and, through complicated algorithms of a heuristic base, it performs calculations in order to determine, for example, the best route the collecting trucks must follow. This tool, which was developed together with the Engineering University, meant saving US$ 800.000 in its first year of usage for distance calculation, not even considering determining optimum routes, informed Conaprole’s Computing Manager, Freddy Lucía.
From the beginning of the year, the producers have the possibility of accessing all the information of their interest that FMM deals with through the Internet (http://www.conaprole.com.uy) by using a navigator. This information includes, milk collection (volume, date, temperature, etc.), laboratory’s analysis, the product’s quality and average, payments, pay dates and current debits, etc.
Internet’s application was developed in GeneXus and uses GXChart to display the data on charts. For example, producers are able to chart the volume that they have handled during the last year, they can visualize the current year and the two former ones on another chart, or what the results of the analysis for a certain period.. The significance of the laboratory results is that the payment to the producers is determined according to the raw material’s quality, which can be up to 18% over the basic price in the industry type milk, if the best quality score is obtained. Apart from that, there is a Debit Management system. Through specific terminals for this type of application, by using magnetic cards, the authorizations for purchasing the material that the producers need at a Conaprole’s filial enterprise are asked for. For that, a value for purchases is given to each producer for each monthly period and is calculated according to the milk volume that he hands in.
All this key information for the producer is within his reach in real time on the Internet.
This resource was available in January and today 11% of the producers, who represent more than the 25% of the milk volume that Conaprole receives, have already adopted Internet’s usage for querying and are becoming more integrated daily, Freddy Lucía informed.
The Internet application for producers’ queries, as well as the systems from which the information is obtained, were developed by the Cooperative’s System Development Department with GeneXus. This data is also obtained in real time. The next project implies adding a system in each dairy, for its management, also allowing permanent access to FMM for logging/tacking product more accurately.
Technical data:
- GeneXus version: GeneXus 6.0
- Web panels’ language: Visual Basic 5.0
- DB and Internet servers: Oracle and Internet Information Server 4
- Security: Certificate of the National Post Office