For food & drink producers
Food manufacturing software for planning and purchasing
Leio is an AI supply planning agent for food and beverage manufacturers. It reads your ERP and your purchasing mailbox, keeps the material plan live against your production schedule, raises and chases purchase orders, and tells you what is about to run short — before the line stops.
What food manufacturing software covers
Food manufacturing software is the set of systems a producer uses to run recipes and bills of materials, batches and lot traceability, stock, purchasing and costing. In practice the category splits in two. A food manufacturing ERP holds the master data and the transactions: what you hold, in which lot, at what cost, against which purchase order. Aplanning layer decides what to make and what to buy, and when.
Most producers have the first. The second usually lives in a spreadsheet that one person maintains, rebuilt every Monday from an ERP export, a production plan and a mailbox full of supplier replies. That spreadsheet is where shortages are found — normally a week after they became unavoidable.
Leio is that second layer, and only that layer. Your ERP stays the system of record. Leio connects to it, works out the material plan continuously, and handles the purchasing round it implies.
Who this is for
Food and drink manufacturers running scheduled production against real customer commitments: bakeries, breweries, dairies, ready meals, sauces and condiments, snacks and soft drinks. Typically 10 to 250 people, with a planner, buyer or operations manager who owns purchasing and does it around everything else in their week.
The pattern is consistent. Short shelf life on both the ingredients and the finished goods. Supplier minimum order quantities that do not divide neatly into a batch. Lead times that are nominal until the week you need them to hold. Retailer volumes that arrive with less notice than the ingredients need. None of that is a data problem your ERP was built to solve.
Do you need a food manufacturing ERP, or a planning agent?
Worth answering honestly, because it is the question the search results dodge. If you cannot say what stock you hold, in which lot, at what cost, you need an ERP or inventory system first, and no planning tool will save you. That is a system of record problem.
If you already have that and the ordering decisions still happen in a spreadsheet, a bigger ERP is not the fix. The MRP run inside your ERP calculates against whatever lead times and minimum order quantities were last typed in, produces a suggestion list when someone remembers to run it, and stops there. It does not send the order, read the reply, or notice that a confirmation slipped past the batch it was bought for. That gap is what people fill by hand, and it is the gap Leio closes.
Spreadsheets, ERP-only, or ERP plus Leio
| Spreadsheet | ERP / MRP only | ERP + Leio | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the plan lives | One person's file | An MRP suggestion list | Live, on top of the ERP |
| When it updates | Rebuilt weekly | When someone runs it | Continuously |
| Raising the PO | Typed by hand | Typed by hand | Drafted, you approve |
| Chasing confirmations | Manual email | Not covered | Chased and read |
| A delivery slips | Found later | Found later | Flagged as an exception |
| Shortage spotted | Days late | At the next run | When the cover breaks |
What Leio does
- Connects to your ERP and your mailbox
- Stock, suppliers, lead times and open purchase orders come from the ERP. Confirmations, delays and substitutions come from email. Leio reads both, because half the plan only ever exists in the inbox.
- Keeps the material plan live
- Drop in production schedules in whatever format you already use. Leio explodes them to ingredients and packaging and keeps the requirement dates current as the schedule moves.
- Raises and chases purchase orders
- It drafts the orders the plan calls for, sends them once you approve, and follows up on the ones nobody has confirmed. The chasing is the part that quietly eats a planner's week.
- Reads supplier replies and flags exceptions
- A confirmation that moves a date, a short delivery, a substitution — Leio reads the reply, updates the plan and surfaces the ones that break cover for a scheduled batch. The rest do not need you.
- Leaves you in control
- Leio does the legwork and the arithmetic. The planner still makes the call on what gets ordered.
Connects to Microsoft Dynamics 365, Cin7, Unleashed, Xero, QuickBooks, Gmail and Microsoft Outlook.
"A system like this, for the lack of better phrase is idiot proof"
Nick
Supply Chain Director
Food manufacturing software FAQs
What is food manufacturing software?
Food manufacturing software is the set of systems a food or drink producer uses to run production: recipes and bills of materials, batches and lot traceability, stock, purchasing and costing. In practice it splits into a food manufacturing ERP that records what happened, and a planning layer that decides what to make and buy next. Most producers have the first and run the second in spreadsheets.
Is Leio a food manufacturing ERP?
No. Leio is the planning and purchasing layer that sits on top of your ERP. Your ERP stays the record of stock, lots, purchase orders and costs. Leio reads it, works out what you need to order and when, drafts and chases the purchase orders, and writes the result back.
Do I need an ERP before I can use Leio?
You need somewhere reliable that holds stock, suppliers and purchase orders — an ERP or an inventory system such as Dynamics 365, Cin7, Unleashed, Xero or QuickBooks. If stock levels only exist in a spreadsheet or in someone’s head, fix that first; no planning layer can work from data that is not there.
Which systems does Leio connect to?
Leio connects to Microsoft Dynamics 365, Cin7, Unleashed, Xero and QuickBooks, and to your purchasing mailbox on Gmail or Microsoft Outlook. The mailbox matters as much as the ERP, because supplier confirmations and delivery changes arrive as email, not as data.
How is this different from the MRP run in my ERP?
An MRP run produces a suggestion list from whatever lead times, minimum order quantities and stock figures happen to be in the system, and it produces it when someone remembers to run it. Leio keeps the same calculation live against your production schedule, and then does the part MRP never covers: sending the order, reading the supplier’s reply, and telling you when a confirmed date no longer covers the batch it was bought for.
Does it place orders without me?
The planner decides. Leio drafts purchase orders, chases confirmations, reads supplier replies and flags the exceptions worth your attention. Approval stays with you.
Is Leio only for UK food manufacturers?
It is built around the way UK food and drink producers work — short shelf life, retailer commitments, supplier minimums — but nothing in it is UK-specific. Producers outside the UK use it the same way.
Ready to get started!
Let's talk - we'll ask about your supply planning challenges & guide you through our solution.