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V4 Software and Cherrydale Farms

Cherrydale Farms is one of the nation's leading candymakers. From its corporate headquarters in Pennsburg, PA, the firm has established a leadership position in the fundraising sector with sales revenues totalling over $90 million annually.

While the firm's aggressive growth strategy has positioned it among the premier players in the industry, when Cherrydale sought a more sophisticated planning capability to enhance the efficiency of its production schedule, it turned to MKS, Inc. and its V4 Executive Decision Support Software.

"From an inventory control standpoint, V4 has enabled us to look out into the future for customer orders based on customer contracts," says Cherrydale Farms Forecasting Manager Kurt Shenk. "It helps us project our inventory needs. From a manufacturing and production standpoint, V4 has allowed us to take those needs and to do just-in-time ordering."

Cherrydale Director of Material's Frank O'Nell shares Shenk's assessment, adding that "when I have two information sources that need to be combined in the planning process, V4 affords us a great deal of speed and flexibility, and ultimately a very quick turnaround."

With V4 forecasts driving Cherrydale's production schedule, everyone agrees that the business intelligence software solution is destined to remain a vital part of the candymaker's ongoing operations.

"V4 is very flexible, adaptable and user friendly for us," Shenk concludes. "It's become an invaluable tool."

USING V4's CONTEXTVAL CAPABILITY sophisticated queries can be generated and reported in Excel. The example above illustrates V4's ability to do complex production schedule analysis for detailed business forecasts. The resultant information displays the individual raw materials needed for the production schedule, due-in purchase order receipts, on hand raw materials, quantities needed and production shortages iin red). V4 was utilized to collect, integrate and explode the production schedule through the bill of materials file, and restructure the information from multiple databases. The power of V4's contextual model enabled this to be done with fewer than 10 programming rules.

For more information about V4 software or V4's success with Cherrydale Farms and other industry leaders, contact MKS today at 888-PICK-MKS (888-742-5657).