Kitchen & Catering Management System Suite

Formula & Production Management

Central kitchen planning, batch control and yield tracking.

PlanningBatch

Industrial manufacturing execution rests on one assumption: the input is known, the process is known, and so is the output. In a central kitchen, none of the three holds.

Put 100 kg of flour into a mixer and the result is predictable. Put an 8 kg primal on the bench and what comes off it depends on the animal, the hand holding the knife, and whether the trim is counted as product, by-product or waste. A formula is not a bill of materials — it is a standard, and actual output moves around that standard on every single run. That movement is where cost and loss live. Production management in food is therefore not about executing a recipe; it is about calibrating the plan, recording the deviation and explaining the difference.

RUIYI Formula & Production Management takes what is already proven on industrial shop floors — work orders, issue limits, batch genealogy, variance analysis — and rebuilds it on how food behaves: demand calibrated before it reaches the plan, formulas released to the station as versions, input and output weighed against each other batch by batch, yield variance attributed to a cause, finished goods carrying their own lot and shelf life, and cost collected per batch and allocated to brands and outlets by the driver that reflects real use.

One batch at a time: from store requisitions being calibrated, to the production plan, batch ticket, issue limits and shop-floor execution, to weighed output, yield comparison, quality release, finished-batch shelf life, shelf-life-driven dispatch and confirmed store receipt — plan and result reported in the same numbers.

Calibrated demand before planningStandard vs actual yieldBatch genealogy both waysShelf life drives dispatch

What it is

It covers one chain: store requisition and demand calibration → production planning and scheduling → batch ticket → material issue → execution and parameter capture → weighed output and yield comparison → quality release → finished-batch lot and shelf life → shelf-life-driven dispatch → store receipt → batch costing and allocation.

It is not a system for printing production sheets. It is the ledger that makes what the plan asked for, what the floor produced and what the store received add up.

The formula is the basis of the ticket, not a document. Versions and effective dates carry quantities, addition order, process parameters, standard yield and unit conversions. A revision is released as a new version and the previous one stops being usable once the effective date passes. What changed, who changed it and when it takes effect are all recorded.
Demand is calibrated before it is planned. Store numbers run high — fear of running out, habit and performance pressure all push them up. Requisitions are checked against recent sales, the calendar, weather, promotions and confirmed catering orders; outliers are pulled back into range and flagged for someone to confirm.
Planning answers to capacity and shelf life at the same time. Equipment throughput, shifts and skills, minimum batch size, changeover time, chilled and staging capacity, finished-goods shelf life and dispatch windows all sit in the schedule. Two brands needing the same blast chiller in the same hour is visible before the shift starts.
Every batch gets a ticket. Item, quantity, formula version, process steps, line, time window and the person responsible sit on one ticket. The floor issues against it, works to it and reports against it.
Output is weighed. Planned output is compared with actual output batch by batch, and the difference is attributed to raw material, equipment or method. Where one input splits into several outputs, cost follows the actual weights and waste is recorded as a named output.
Finished goods are stock with a clock on it. A batch leaving the line carries its own lot and expiry, is issued FEFO, and is locked once expired. Dispatch weighs stock-out risk against write-off risk rather than simply serving the nearest store first.

What gets in the way today

The problem is rarely the cooking itself. It is not knowing how much to make, and not knowing what the run actually produced.

Planning

Store requisitions go straight into the plan. Reported numbers are systematically high. Head office produces to them, and the surplus either expires in the chiller or is written off at the store. Overproduction is the single largest source of kitchen waste.
Sales history is never adjusted. Forecasts copy last week, or simply repeat it — ignoring a promotion, a public holiday, a catering order or the weather. Missing stock is a loss too; it just never appears on the waste report.
Capacity is sufficient in total and clashes in practice. Weekly capacity adds up, but several brands need the same oven, the same blast chiller or the same dispatch slot at the same time, and the last hour before dispatch becomes a scramble.
Minimum batch size fights shelf life. Longer runs save changeover time, but a semi-finished item with a short shelf life that does not sell is a write-off. Without data, the batch size is a guess.

Execution

Formulas live in spreadsheets and in people's heads. Quantities go in by feel, and a revision has neither a version nor an effective date. When something goes wrong, nobody can tell which version of the formula started it.
Issue has no limit and inputs are not recorded by lot. The floor takes what it thinks it needs and over-issue needs no approval. Which ingredient lot went into which batch is not written down, so a problem upstream cannot be traced to the finished goods it reached.
Output is never weighed, so yield cannot be discussed. Standard yield on the formula card is a paper number. The gap does not disappear — it resurfaces weeks later as a stock count that is short by a few kilos with no reason attached.
Waste from breaking down raw material has no name. One primal yields product, trim and bone, and usually only the product is counted. A waste stream that is never named is never measured.
Finished goods carry no lot or expiry. A store receives several identical packs and cannot tell which to sell first, so first-expiry-first-out becomes whichever pack is at the front.
Critical parameters are remembered rather than recorded. Cooking, chilling and reheating are steps where limits matter. When time and temperature stay on paper or in memory, there is nothing to show when it counts.

Cost and variance

Loss is booked as a stock adjustment. Month-end shortfall is evened out in one line, hiding where the loss happened and why. Real yield loss disappears into the adjustment.
Overproduction and poor yield cost the same and need different answers. One is a forecasting and scheduling question, the other a raw material, equipment or method question. If the write-off value does not separate them, the response is always aimed at the wrong one.
Shared resources are allocated by feel. Labour, equipment, chilled storage and delivery are split evenly across brands, so the highest-volume brand is not necessarily the most profitable — it may need premium storage, narrow delivery windows and more frequent drops.

What you get

Capabilities

Capability	What it does
Formula and process master	Multi-level recipes with versions, effective dates, addition order, process parameters, standard yield and unit conversions; a revision is released as a new version and the previous one stops being usable.
Unit conversion	Purchase, stock, recipe and issue units convert in one place, and quantities are calculated into the unit the ticket issues in.
Breakdown and prep recipes	One input splitting into several weighted outputs — main product, by-product and waste — with cost allocated by actual yield and waste recorded as a named output.
Demand consolidation and calibration	Store requisitions consolidated and checked against recent sales, calendar, weather, promotions and confirmed catering orders, with outliers flagged before they become production.
Production planning and scheduling	Schedules built against equipment throughput, shifts and skills, minimum batch size, changeover, chilled and staging capacity, finished-goods shelf life and dispatch windows.
Batch tickets	One ticket per batch carrying item, quantity, formula version, process steps, line, time window and the responsible operator.
Material issue with limits	Issue against the ticket quantity; over-issue requires approval and a recorded reason.
Shop-floor execution	Electronic work instructions at the station, with weight, time and temperature captured from the device; critical limits configured per product and per local regulation, with alerts and corrective actions recorded.
Yield capture and variance	Planned output against actual output for every batch, with variance attributed to raw material, equipment or method and analysed by product, line, shift and batch.
Batch genealogy	Forward from ingredient lot to finished batch and store; backward from a pack at a store to its production batch, line, time and ingredient lots.
Quality hold and release	Inspection at goods-in, in-process and finished goods, with sample retention; a batch stays on hold and unavailable for dispatch until it is released.
Finished-batch shelf life	Each finished batch carries its own lot and expiry, is issued FEFO, and is locked once expired and routed into the write-off flow.
Batch costing and allocation	Actual material, labour and overhead collected per batch; shared cost allocated to brand and outlet by the driver that reflects real use.
Dispatch with two-sided confirmation	Batch, quantity, destination and handling requirements recorded on dispatch; the receiving store confirms what actually arrived, with partial receipts, rejections and returns syncing both sides.

How it works

Stores close the till and submit requisitions. Sales flow back from the POS and the store enters what it needs for the next day or week on a mobile device.
Demand is calibrated. Requisitions are checked against recent actual sales, holidays and weather, the promotion plan and confirmed catering orders. A suggested quantity is produced, outliers are flagged, and the store manager confirms or adjusts with a reason.
Head office consolidates and checks capacity. Confirmed store demand is consolidated, stock on hand and in transit is deducted, and ingredient requirements are calculated back through the formula. Equipment, shifts and dispatch windows are checked at the same time, and clashes are surfaced.
The production plan and shifts are generated. Output is scheduled across lines, shifts and time windows, with urgent insertions approved and recorded.
Batch tickets are issued and material is drawn. Each batch gets a ticket carrying the formula version and process parameters; the floor draws material against the limit and records the ingredient lot at the point of issue.
The floor executes and parameters are captured. Weight, time and temperature are captured at the station, critical control points are recorded as required, and out-of-limit readings trigger an alert and a corrective action. Output is weighed and actual yield entered.
Release, shelf life and dispatch. Once quality releases the batch it carries its own lot and expiry. Dispatch is scheduled against store stock levels, batch expiry, stock-out risk, vehicle capacity and receiving windows; the store confirms receipt by scan and both inventories move together.

Each cycle closes with a reconciliation: forecast demand against actual sales, planned output against actual output, material issued against goods produced, standard cost against batch cost, and planned dispatch against what the store received. That is not a month-end task for finance — operations needs it to set the next plan.

Integration & deployment

POS and till systems. Sales drive demand calibration without the store re-entering anything.
Procurement and inventory. Shared item and lot master data with Procurement and Inventory Management: the production plan generates ingredient demand directly, and issue and output move stock as they happen.
Finance and ERP. Batch costs, material issues and finished-goods receipts move across in both directions.
Scales, temperature probes and cold-chain devices. Weight, temperature and in-transit conditions are captured from the device instead of copied by hand.

Deployment model — cloud, on-premise or hybrid — and the rollout sequence are agreed during scoping, usually starting with one region or a pilot group of stores.