ISSUE FOCUS 24 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE March 2023 within the food, petfood and animal feed industry. Moreover, this platform integrates with your recipe formulation, which contributes to efficiency and flexibility in your organization What do you think is an efficient and proper feed formulation? What should be paid attention to when choosing and using a software for this? When looking for software in general I think some aspects are important: • Technology used • Customer service availability (phone, online, FAQ, …) • References in the same industry • Local presence of the vendor • Knowledge level of the software vendor • Innovations and update delivered by the vendor on the software • Languages in which the software is available • Protection of the data entered in the system • Backup / disaster recovery in case something goes wrong • Ultimately of course also the pricing will be an aspect to consider, although in my opinion not the most important one. More important is to have a close look at the ROI of the investment • User experience, ease of use • Is the software scalable, meaning if you grow as a company, is the software and hardware setup capable of following the same growth • Flexible reporting capabilities For feed formulation software more specific I think following aspects could be of importance: • Security/authorization: who can access certain data • Performance of certain workflows, how efficient can you manage recipes • Integrated labeling solution • Ability to formulate big amounts of recipes at the same time (several thousands in some cases) to be able to do the what if scenarios as mentioned higher in the doc • Strong integration with other software (MES, quality systems, ERP, …) • When applicable, combine ration calculation, feed optimization, premix formulation in one tool • Advanced formulation techniques available: - Work with enzymes - Integer optimization - Non-linear optimization - …. We are talking about many advantages of software. But can anyone use the software developed for feed formulation, etc.? Does it require special expertise to use them? Based on your own software solutions, can we also touch on the simple interface and ease of use? I think anybody can work with feed formulation software. Of course, you will need the proper training and guidance to be able to complete your daily work. Depending on your role in the company you will need specific knowledge. Needless to say that if you do not have nutritional knowledge it will be hard to manage recipes in a correct way. The software should be designed in such a way, that any user, with limited effort can truly experience al the benefits of our tools. About Karel Vervaet Karel got his master's degree in Bioscience Engineering at the Ghent University in 1997. At BESTMIX software, he has been active for many years as a senior consultant in feed formulation software and as leader of the BESTMIX® development team. In his current position as Sr. Product Specialist Nutrition he keeps close track of the IT developments within the nutrition industry and works in close collaboration with major players in feed and petfood production. Given his experience as consultant for many international feed companies, Karel is in a perfect position to look at the role of BESTMIX® in feed manufacturing organizations and to its integration with other software. Karel has a special interest in sustainability and in how to include the environmental impact of animal nutrition production in feed formulation software.
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