Customer stories


American Milk Products Corporation

Worldwide distributor manages complex tracking requirements with FileMaker Pro databases.

 American Milk Products Corporation is an import-export distribution firm, dealing with every sort of milk-based product other than fluid milk itself. Cheese and butter, dry milk products, milk proteins are the focus for American Milk Products Corporation, which tracks its worldwide shipments with FileMaker Pro, the award-winning database software application from FileMaker, Inc.


Business challenges

 Distribution of milk products is a very complicated business. "Our industry has very specific and complex inventory control needs,” comments American Milk's vice president Raymond Stern. "A lot of our products are distributed in containers with non-standard weights, so we have to keep track of both the number of containers in a shipment and the weight of the individual containers. We also have a lot of government paperwork dealing with customs licenses and import/export regulations.”


Successful solution

 

Over a decade and a half ago, American Milk Products turned to FileMaker Pro for help in organizing all this complex data, and they've been using the software ever since. "We run our whole business on FileMaker Pro,” Raymond notes. "FileMaker Pro supports our order-tracking system, inventory control, and our databases for tracking compliance with regulations.”

American Milk Products' specialized needs required a tailor-made database solution. "There's no off the shelf solution out there that can work for us, so we built our own in FileMaker Pro,” continues Raymond. "We have to be able to track products by specific lots, we have to know where every product goes and how and when it got there, and that's a really difficult job to do with an off-the-shelf product. But with FileMaker Pro, we've developed a system that works.”

Today, that system contains over 200 databases, with upwards of 300,000 records. And it's a flexible, dynamic system that grows and evolves along with FileMaker Pro itself .


"The most exciting new feature of FileMaker Pro 7 is the ability to work in multiple tables in a single file. This is really going to make developing in FileMaker Pro quicker and more efficient, without my having to use a lot of programming tricks to get to where I need to be within a file. The whole concept of defining a database in one window will cut down development time tremendously."

Raymond Stern, vice president, American Milk Products Corporation


Customer benefits

Over the years, Raymond's become quite comfortable developing in the FileMaker Pro environment, and he's excited about the refinements in the new FileMaker Pro 7. "The most exciting new feature of FileMaker Pro 7 is the ability to work in multiple tables in a single file,” he declares. "This is really going to make developing in FileMaker Pro quicker and more efficient, without my having to use a lot of programming tricks to get to where I need to be within a file. The whole concept of defining a database in one window will cut down development time tremendously.”

The complex database system used at American Milk Products already makes heavy use of FileMaker Pro's relational abilities, and with the relationship graph in FileMaker Pro 7, Raymond's looking forward to streamlining the development process. "It's a real help to be able to graphically see database relationships, to have the whole database structure pictured out in front of you,” he adds. "This approach makes developing relationships so much easier.”



Contact information

Contact Info for Customer:

Raymond Stern
Vice President
American Milk Products Corporation
201-569-6495
raystern@amermilk.com
http://www.amermilk.com


Filemaker Contact:

Kevin Mallon
Public Relations Manager
FileMaker Inc.
408-987-7227
kevin_mallon@filemaker.com
http://www.filemaker.com


Overview
  • Import, export, warehouse distribution firm dealing in a wide range of dairy products
  • Based in Cresskill, NJ
  • About 10 employees
Industry
  • Small Business
Solutions
  • Track orders
  • Manage inventory
  • Manage federal compliance requirements
Benefits
  • Increased efficiency in order tracking and inventory control
  • Improved accuracy of information to federal government