Upgrading Smithfield Romania Farm Division’s old JD Edwards ERP system to a customized and fully supported version

Following the investment of over USD 600 million to date, Smithfield Romania operates in an integrated system: Farms Division, Fresh Meat Division, and Packaged Meats Division.  The company operate under the strictest and high-performing standards applicable in the field, throughout the entire production flow: in farms, the meat plant, and the packaged meats plants.

Smithfield Romania’s mission is operational excellence, setting high standards in the Romanian food industry and revitalizing the domestic pork production.

The main objectives of Smithfield Romania’s Farm Division were:

• Mitigating the risk of an old IBM Power architecture machine running out of support by moving to a new and much more flexible environment running on Intel.
• Upgrading from an old unsupported JD Edwards World to the latest JD Edwards Enterprise One 9.2 version.
• Moving from DB2 database to Oracle database, customer using already Oracle database technology for other existing applications.
• Migrating data from the old system to the new ERP.
• Roll-out the customized JD Edwards 9.1 system from Smithfield Foods’ mother company.
• Localize the new JD Edwards 9.2 for Romania.
• Performing the upgrade with minimal disruption to the organization.
• Modernizing enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes and data security.
• Implementing the newly available functionality of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne.

And here’s where Algotech was stepping in. We guided Smithfield Romania through the process of upgrading from their old and unsupported version of JD Edwards World to the latest JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.2 checking all the above objectives during this process.

Overcome challenges in this project were bringing up to date a very old existing Romanian localization of JDE according with the last legal requirements and with the specific requests of the local team. Also customizing the production module rolled-out from JDE 9.1 US system to fit the local business specificities.

Very appreciated by the client was the technical part of the project which assured as a result a 100% Oracle technology solution running on Intel architecture and with the historical data migrated in the new system.

It’s worth mentioning that the whole project took place during pandemic times, 100% remote, and this fact created communication and collaboration challenges unseen before.  Despite all this, we have been able to easily adapt our methodology and guide the project through successful, fully remote implementation project.

As a proof of our work well done, Smithfield also entrusted Algotech with the support of the new ERP. Also they chose Algotech for developing further the new JDE ERP with Feed transportation functionalities, with a financial consolidation function between divisions and with developing new statutory reports required by Romanian authorities.

In the words of Mr. Mihai Milchi, IT Director of Smithfield Romania: “We upgraded our Farm Division’s ERP using Algotech’s services. We met on this occasion dedicated and very skilled technical people and consultants, a team who helped us to perform this very challenging process for an enterprise as smooth as it can be. It is the quality of their work which made us choose Algotech also for the support and further development of our new ERP system.”