Multi Unit Support

Food production is different from most other production in many ways. One of these is the need for comprehensive unit handling.

It is very common to have to talk about products in a number of different units.

For example, chickens may be bought in each and sold in kg. Another example is when making sausages the casings are often bought in cases, stock stacked in caddies, and used in recipies in metres.

Packmin supports these unit conversions. You can define which units to use for each product, and what the conversion factors are. When the system needs to convert between units and they can be done automatically then they will be. When they can’t then the system will ask you (via a prompt on the screen, or via a weighing scale) what the value for the required unit is.

For example, a customer may place an order for 50 chickens. Chickens are purchased in cartons, with 10 chickens to a carton, so the system will create a purchase order for 5 cartons. But whole chicken is priced on weight, so at the point that the sales order is processed, the system will ask for the weight, or take it directly from the scales. This gives you the flexibility to use whatever unit makes sense to you. The system can also do automatic conversions between standard units, such as metres and feet, kilograms and pounds etc.