Hausebeck Pickles and Peppers

Hausbeck Pickles and Peppers was managing its business on paperbased processes, with limited visibility into production and inventory – its largest asset. Inventory costs were becoming increasingly difficult to manage throughout the production process, and after one failed mock audit, it was clear to the team that they needed more control over ingredient tracking and traceability. With no IT department or expertise in ERP systems, the search began for an easy-to-manage yet powerful solution that fit the needs of a food and beverage manufacturer.

In 2014, the CFO of Hausbeck Pickles and Peppers realized that the data she was working with in the accounting system wasn’t adding up.

She was unable to track the cost of inventory from receipt of inventory to finished product. Inventory would end up missing and she couldn’t figure out why. What made it even more complicated was the company’s inventory costing model changes from one season to the next. “We had QuickBooks for our accounting system, and another system for inventory (finished goods only) with no costing,” said Virginia Palinsky, CFO.

“Each department had spreadsheets but nothing was consistent and things did not match.”

The other challenge the company faced was tracking and tracing ingredients through production. Multiple spreadsheets and paper-based processes were cumbersome and time-consuming.

A Smooth Implementation

The team relied heavily on Plex during implementation since it was the company’s first ERP implementation. They met with their Plex Customer Success and Support (CSS) implementation expert twice a week to map out the processes and methodology. Six months later, the implementation was complete.

Palinsky explained that Hausbeck was at an advantage because the company wasn’t moving from one ERP system to another, and they had a very dedicated team from the top down. She says this was key to their success.

“I think the implementation went very well, in my opinion. Doing an ERP implementation is not an easy task, and it takes commitment. Our management teams were part of the process. They made it a priority, and they wanted to get it done—which is critical for the success of this type of endeavor,” said Palinsky.

“And we couldn’t have done it without a Plex lead person to walk us through, step-by-step, and the project plan was very efficient for us.”

Capturing Production as It Happens

After go-live, the team was surprised how easy it was for employees who were technology-challenged to use Plex. Warehouse employees who were not computer savvy could easily look up inventory within the system and find what they were looking for via the inventory module.

“Once they got their hands on the tablets and figured out checksheets, employees were surprised at how easy it was to navigate and how easy it was to get data in there,” said Edwards.

An immediate benefit the Hausbeck team noticed was how Plex records production. Prior to Plex, production often was recorded two or three days after it had occurred. Then the information had to be put into a spreadsheet and imported into QuickBooks.

“It really makes a difference on inventory traceability and accuracy to record production immediately as it occurs for visibility into production,” said Edwards.

For Hausbeck, this is key since production includes a complex fermentation process. A lot happens with how the pickles ferment that can affect yields.

If 50,000 pounds of fresh cucumbers are put into a brine tank, that same amount doesn’t come out because the pickles shrink during fermentation. To get an accurate read on the total yield, the company must measure shrink—and this was all done on spreadsheets prior to Plex—so balancing inventory was challenging.

“We’re trying to get the right ratio of fermentation and shrink. Any improvements to ratios can only be done once a year. And whether or not what we did had any effect on that ratio is a lot harder to know without having a system like Plex,” said Hausbeck.

Achieving Near-Perfect Inventory Accuracy

Since inventory is Hausbeck’s largest asset, the ability to track it from receipt through production to customer shipment is critical.

“In 2015, we were at about 70 percent inventory accuracy. That was just before we went live with Plex, then in 2016 we increased that to 93 percent. In 2017, we reached 94 percent, and we’re on trend to end 2018 right around 99.6 percent— so that tells me Plex is working.”

-Dawn Gordon, Warehouse Manager, Hausbeck Pickles & Peppers

Before implementing Plex, the warehouse kept track of material requirements planning (MRP) by having one person physically count materials and report it to somebody else. That person would contact the supplier to see if Hausbeck could purchase more.

“There would be a lot of going back and forth between multiple people and we would end up questioning how accurate the final counts were. In Plex, MRP tells you what’s in inventory. It tells you what we need, when we need it, and how to order it,” said Edwards.

For the company’s CEO, the ability to dig into data about scrap is another key improvement on inventory management.

“Now that we have reason codes for everything the next step is to determine what we’re going to do about scrap. How can we make it better? What’s normal? What’s not normal? That’s where we can develop better KPIs to help us see if we’re trending in the right direction,” said Hausbeck.

Digitizing Quality Management—for Comprehensive Traceability

Most, if not all, documentation was done manually on paper before Hausbeck went live on Plex. When the company had to respond to audits, gathering historical data from multiple products or multiple days was extremely time consuming and cumbersome. Unfortunately, this led to failing one mock recall.

With Plex, Hausbeck can now pull up traceability information with the click of a mouse. This came in handy recently when performing a mock recall during a customer audit. Using the production date, the team was able to track forward and backward, and within minutes, the ingredient was identified by the auditor.

Hausbeck also relies on Plex to continuously improve the quality of its pickles.

About Plex

Different seeds affect the quality of a pickle, so it was important for us to be able to track it all the way to the seed,” said Palinsky. “And it brought up new questions for us in how we want to improve quality.

Most important is the ability to demonstrate Hausbeck’s compliance with customer specifications. One of the company’s biggest customers, Subway, rates suppliers based on scorecards—and providing comprehensive traceability is a major requirement.

“If we’re able to provide the information our customers are asking for, we can show that we can be a strategic business partner,” said Palinsky.

Getting Deeper Insights About the Business

Edwards admits that Hausbeck is just scratching the surface when it comes to data within Plex.