What NetSuite 2024.2 Means for Food & Beverage Manufacturers: Smarter Supply Chains, Less Waste, More Agility

One of the key advantages of using NetSuite is that the company provides biannual updates—at no additional cost to customers—keeping your system up to date with the latest capabilities. In its most recent release, NetSuite 2024.2 introduced a range of enhancements that, while designed for broad manufacturing and supply chain use, offer significant benefits for the unique needs of food & beverage manufacturers.

As a trusted NetSuite partner, Zastro is here to help you understand how these updates can be applied to your operations—delivering real value across inventory, production, quality, and compliance.

  1. 1. SuiteApps that Align Supply & Demand

One of the standout improvements in 2024.2 is the three new SuiteApps. These apps are designed to give clearer visibility into inventory, production planning, and costs. For food & beverage manufacturers, especially those with perishable inputs, these can be game‑changers:

  • Supply 360: Allows you to compare what you need for upcoming work orders vs what you have on hand (and on order). This helps you spot component shortages ahead of time—think ingredients, packaging, packaging materials—so you can avoid production delays or emergency procurement.
  • Available to Build: Lets you see how many of a finished product (or subassembly) you can produce with existing inventory. Very useful when you’re promising delivery dates to customers or making promotional commitments.
  • Cost Variance Analysis: Automatically compares your planned vs actual costs of work orders. Overshoots get flagged, and variances are shown. This helps understand where costs are creeping up—ingredient cost, labor, packaging, conversions, etc. It is very important in F&B where margins can be tight and input costs are volatile.
  1. More Efficiency, Less Waste in the Warehouse

Maintaining product freshness, minimizing spoilage, and ensuring compliance—through accurate lot tracking, traceability, and recall readiness—requires highly efficient warehouse operations. NetSuite 2024.2 delivers key enhancements to streamline warehouse and shipping workflows:

  • Automated replenishment scheduling: Rather than manually checking bins, you can set up rules or filters (by item, group, classification, etc.) so stock gets replenished proactively. Help ensure you don’t run out of critical ingredients or packaging parts.
  • Bulk serial or lot number captured during receiving with a single scan for an entire pallet. For food and beverages, lot and batch traceability is crucial—this speeds up incoming inspection and minimizes manual errors.
  • Failed pick task reporting: Identify which orders didn’t get picked, why (e.g., item missing, incorrect bin, etc.). This helps reduce order misses or delays.
  • Smarter shipping via Ship Central:
    • Automatically select the cheapest option that still meets promised delivery dates.
    • Enhanced label printing (e.g., return labels, hazmat shipping, content declarations)—useful for F&B, especially with items needing special handling or documentation.
  • Cycle counts from the Warehouse Management System (WMS) mobile app: More frequent inventory verification without needing a desktop or extensive downtime. Helps catch shrinkage, damage, and spoilage earlier.
  1. Enhancements to Mobile, Quality, and Supply Planning

Staying agile often means doing more from the floor, on mobile devices, and having better controls over quality and planning. Key updates:

  • Supply Chain Management (SCM) Mobile enhancements: Color‑coding of work/sales orders by status (fulfilled, in‑process, delayed) makes it easier at a glance to see trouble spots. Additionally, better printer organization ensures that print jobs (such as labels) are directed to the nearest resource, thereby reducing waste and delays in labeling steps.
  • Manufacturing Mobile: Automatic population of lot and/or serial numbers from GS1 barcode scanning; automated lot numbering (via a SuiteApp). These features enhance tracking, improve accuracy, and facilitate traceability in the food and beverage (F&B) industry. Also, requiring badge swipes to start/end manufacturing steps helps with accountability, time tracking, and regulatory or auditing readiness.
  • Quality Management enhancements: Stronger controls so that only assigned employees complete inspections; preventing post-inspection edits; being selective about when inspections are triggered; ability to schedule inspections for items sold by quantity (e.g., pounds, liters) rather than just units. That’s very relevant for F&B, where weight matters a lot.
  • Supply Planning flexibility: New options around minimum order quantity vs lot size give you more realistic and cost-sensitive planning. For example, if your minimum order quantity from a supplier is high but you want to produce in smaller batches, these settings help bridge that gap without forcing you to buy more than needed. Also, extending the demand planning horizon and lead times up to three years helps with sourcing long‑lead inputs or dealing with seasonal availability. Separate filters for firm vs unfirm orders let you see what’s confirmed vs what’s speculative—important when planning perishable inventory.
  1. What This Means for Food & Beverage Manufacturers

Whether you’re already using NetSuite or evaluating ERP options to modernize your operations, the 2024.2 release brings significant advantages for food & beverage manufacturers looking to improve efficiency, reduce risk, and drive growth.

Here’s how both current and future NetSuite users can benefit:

  • Reduce spoilage and waste through smarter inventory replenishment, real-time lot/serial tracking, and more frequent, accurate cycle counts—essential for managing perishable goods.
  • Gain clearer visibility into costs and margins, making it easier to respond to fluctuations in ingredients, packaging, or transportation expenses and protect profitability.
  • Strengthening traceability and quality control, streamlining audits, and improving compliance with food safety, labeling, and recall regulations.
  • Improve delivery performance and customer satisfaction by knowing exactly what you can produce with available inventory—supporting reliable order commitments and fewer delays.
  • Boost productivity with mobile tools and automation, including barcode scanning, badge tracking, and paperless processes—helping your teams do more with less, whether on the floor or in the warehouse.

Food & beverage manufacturers operate in a sector where ingredients spoil, regulations are stringent, and customer expectations for safety, delivery, and quality are non-negotiable. NetSuite 2024.2 introduces practical tools to help you meet these challenges: better visibility, tighter cost control, more agile supply planning, and stronger quality & traceability.

At Zastro, we believe your ERP / supply chain/manufacturing system should be more than just recordkeeping. It should provide insights and automation that help you make decisions faster, reduce waste, and stay ahead, especially in volatile times.

If you’d like to explore how NetSuite 2024.2 features map to your specific facility, product mix, or supply chain, we’d be happy to set up a call or demo.

Let’s Talk About NetSuite

Zastro’s NetSuite Consulting Services provides ERP solutions for businesses that want to streamline processes and make operations more efficient. From customer communications to back-office operations, Zastro can help your company effectively implement NetSuite to manage the resources and tools needed to scale.