Project Number
Spies 01
Project title
Market directed information management in the South African wine industry
Project leader
Spies, P H
Institution
Private
Team members
Van Dyk, E
Maspero, E
De Villiers, G
Foster, G
Viljoen, F
Martin, G
Steyn, D
Project description
Wine is a natural product, a co-product of a number of interdependent factors and processes in a value chain consisting of products and services (the supply chain) flowing from the farm to the market, and earnings, price signals and other information (the demand chain) flowing back from the market to the cellar and the farm.
A key aspect of this value chain is the decisions of wine grape producers with respect to terroir selection, root stock and vine cultivar selection, and vineyard management practices. These decisions must align natural resource management, wine farming practices with market directed wine production in the cellars which in turn must respond effectively to market signals.
It is a challenging problem to build an alignment between more than 5000 wine industry decision makers around the business logic of market matched product offerings. It requires outstanding co-operation between wine industry stakeholders, and effective process alignment between the links in the value chain.
This information management project is primarily aimed at wine farmers and the wineries that produce their wines. The ultimate aim is to promote co-operation and process alignment by means of an efficient and effective market directed industry information management system, supported by service level agreements and an industry culture of learning, human development, knowledge sharing, and innovativeness.
The specific deliverables relating to this aim are the following:
- A strategic long term foresight service, ‘Wine Industry Futures’, which covers long term trends and foresight in the global and national business, social, technological, institutional, political and natural resources decision making environments of the South African wine industry. This includes a process to update an annual ‘Wine Industry Futures’ publication. The aim of this publication is to support long term effectiveness and efficiency in the general operations of the South African wine industry in particular to align South African wine industry business and farming activity with trends in the global wine business and market environments.
- A supply and demand chain based Information Communication Protocol system that will enhance the awareness of all industry stakeholders with respect to their responsibilities in information exchange. This ICP-system will, inter alia, provide guidelines for preserving the security of the competitive industry information of participating businesses, methods of information aggregation that will ensure such security, and the exclusive availability of information to participating organisations and individuals. The aim of an ICP-system is to enhance efficiency in supply chain interactions.
- A wine industry SLA-system (Service Level Agreement) that will support the recommended ICP-system.
- An IED-system (Information Exchange Development) that will promote foresight and information systems alignment within the South African wine industry. These will aim to align existing information service providers in the wine industry with the industry foresight service ‘Wine industry Futures’, with the proposed ICP-SLA systems, to build industry networks that will promote effective information exchange, and to link IED with wine industry education, training and extension processes. An important facet of this deliverable is the co-operative development of essential industry guidelines for effective and efficient wine farming and winemaking practice in the various regions of the South African wine industry.
- Alignment between wine industry stakeholder information needs and the vendors of industry information – including, (inter alia) VinPro, SAWIS, WOSA and IT-based management systems – with respect to the above mentioned.