[VIDEO] Recipe for reliability: inside Colruyt Group Fine Food’s leap forward

May 12, 2026
  • food
  • SAP

Colruyt Group Fine Food is the engine behind some of the most recognizable bread, cheese, meat, coffee and wine brands that Belgian families put on their tables every day. To remain the Group’s trusted supplier and prepare for the future, Fine Food set out on its most ambitious transformation yet: FFOX (Fine Food Operational Excellence). With delaware as its co‑pilot, Fine Food is building one digital backbone for 10+ plants, mixing craftsmanship with modern tools. The goal? More reliability, simpler shopfloor work, and a future-ready production chain. (Reading time: 5 minutes)

Challenge

Colruyt Fine Food needed a reliable way to unify its many production sites, reduce paper-heavy processes, and boost delivery reliability to become the Group’s default supplier.

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Solution

Together with delaware and partners, Fine Food rolled out a phased SAP backbone (IBP, S/4HANA, Digital Manufacturing) built on a repeatable template - with strong change support on the shopfloor.

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Result

The first go-lives delivered zero store disruption, stronger traceability, and simpler digital workflows, paving the way for a paperless, future-proof production chain.

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Challenge

As part of its long-term strategy Fine Food Tomorrow, Colruyt Group Fine Food set a clear ambition: become the default supplier for all Colruyt Group formats. Achieving that position requires more than craftsmanship alone. It means guaranteeing delivery reliability, ensuring consistent quality across every product line, and building the flexibility to keep pace with competitors that continue to innovate rapidly.

Behind the scenes, Fine Food’s operations were spread over more than 10 plants, each with its own processes and systems. This made it difficult to share best practices, plan across sites, or scale innovation consistently. Paper still played a leading role on the shopfloor, limiting visibility and slowing down collaboration.

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Our responsibility is to combine the pride and skill of our people with modern efficiency. FFOX is a way to ensure we remain a reliable partner for every Colruyt brand today and for the decade ahead.
Gunther Uyttenhove, Director Fine Food & Farming at Colruyt Group

Solution

To turn ambition into reality, Fine Food launched FFOX (Fine Food Operational Excellence): a multi-year transformation program that reshapes IT, processes, and ways of working across all plants. delaware was their partner contributing digital expertise, food industry know-how based on its FAST-Food ERP template and an AI-infused pragmatic project approach, co-designing the new digital backbone together with Fine Food’s own teams.

At the core of the backbone is SAP’s end-to-end architecture, connecting planning, ERP, and shopfloor execution in a single flow:

The principle guiding the program is adopt over adapt. A common template avoids unnecessary customizations while keeping enough flexibility for each product division. This approach ensures both robustness and scalability as new plants come online.

Equally important was the human side. Communication and training were embedded close to the shopfloor, led by Fine Food’s own people with the support of delaware experts. Operators were shown how the new tools simplified their daily tasks, which built trust and secured adoption. As a result, FFOX is not only an IT transformation but also an organizational shift that empowers employees to work more efficiently and reliably.


What did
we do?

Starting with a pilot

The program began in the cheese division. This pilot was chosen because it had enough complexity to test the end-to-end flow, yet was manageable in scope and risk. It validated the integration of SAP IBP, S/4HANA and SAP DM, proving that the template could support both planning and shopfloor execution.

Scaling through repeatable waves

After the successful pilot and initial rollout within the Cheese division, the template will roll out to other sites in waves. Each go-live builds on lessons learned, making preparation faster and adoption easier. Thanks to strong planning and close collaboration between Fine Food and delaware, each go-live stays on track and delivers as intended.

Focusing on people

From the start, the focus was adoption on the shopfloor. Employees take pride in their craftsmanship, and the new tools were positioned as enablers to make their daily work simpler and more reliable. Scanners, digital reporting, and connected planning replaced paper-heavy tasks. Operators can now log events digitally, providing real-time data and speeding up response to disruptions.

With FFOX, Colruyt Group Fine Food is building more than a system upgrade. The program creates one backbone that supports growth, strengthens reliability, and positions Fine Food as the default supplier for Colruyt Group in the years ahead.
Nicolas Maes, Partner & Lead Consumer Business & Food at delaware

Results

The first go-lives showed that FFOX delivers on its promise. Production continued smoothly, without any disruption for Colruyt stores and customers. 

  • Continuity secured: transitions were executed without impact on the shelves.
  • Traceability strengthened: every product now carries a digital record from intake to expedition.
  • Simpler shopfloor work: scanners and digital reporting have replaced paper-heavy processes, bringing Fine Food closer to its paperless factory vision.

As one plant manager observed: “Our processes are now really digital. We barely do anything offline anymore. The goal of a paperless factory is now realistic.”

These results are not just operational wins. They strengthen Fine Food’s position as Colruyt Group’s default supplier and show that the company can keep pace with an industry that is always innovating.

By starting with a focused pilot and scaling step by step, we could build confidence, learn as we went, and make sure every site was ready. This disciplined approach allowed us to modernize without disrupting our production or our customers.
Gunther Uyttenhove, Director Fine Food & Farming at Colruyt Group

Zoom out: inside Belgium’s first IBP-ERP-DM backbone

FFOX is not just another SAP project. It’s Belgium’s first end-to-end implementation that combines SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP), SAP S/4HANA ERP, and SAP Digital Manufacturing (DM) into one connected backbone for food production.

Where most companies keep long-term planning, transactional ERP, and shopfloor execution in separate worlds, Fine Food now connects them in one integrated flow - from forecasting demand to steering production lines in real time.

Traditionally, Colruyt Group relied heavily on custom-built IT. With FFOX, Fine Food chose to work with standard SAP functionalities, keeping the system cleaner, more future-proof, and aligned with SAP’s roadmap. The template covers finance, procurement, sales, and quality control - with smart exceptions where shopfloor realities demand them.

The architecture brings all time horizons together:

  • SAP IBP supports strategic questions such as how a 5% rise in demand affects capacity or how to plan inventory levels during a line rebuild.
  • SAP S/4HANA anchors transactions across procurement, sales, warehousing, quality, and finance.
  • SAP Digital Manufacturing orchestrates shopfloor execution, from integrating scales on the production line to real-time reporting of yields and stoppages. This component in particular will serve as the foundation for Fine Food’s evolution toward a true Factory of the Future.

This full supply chain visibility – from planning to execution – is what makes FFOX unique in the Belgian food industry.

Colruyt Group Fine Food & delaware

The strength of FFOX lies in partnership. Colruyt Group Fine Food brought deep product knowledge, a clear long-term ambition, and the dedication of its people. delaware contributed digital expertise, food industry experience, and the discipline to translate strategy into execution.

For Fine Food, this was never a purely technical exercise. It was about building a foundation for the next decade, one that combines craftsmanship with digital capability. For delaware, it was about proving that a standard, end-to-end SAP template can succeed in one of the most complex production environments in Belgium.

“FFOX shows what we can achieve when expertise comes together. delaware helped us turn a complex ambition into a workable template that strengthens our reliability today and prepares Fine Food for the years ahead,” says Gunther Uyttenhove, Director Fine Food & Farming at Colruyt Group.

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