OWS Foods Automates Scheduling and Planning

Michael Farrow is IT Director, OWS Foods, and Patti Nowak is owner, Control+M Solutions. OWS Foods is a premier manufacturer of sauces, dressings and marinades and seasonings, rubs and dry mixes. They’ve used the Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform™ for 10 years to help grow their business and positively impact daily operations.

Control+M is a Gold-level system integrator in the Rockwell Automation PartnerNetwork™. The four-time Plex Impact Award winner, including Partner of the Year in 2023, focuses exclusively on helping clients successfully deploy and use the platform. They’ve supported OWS since the manufacturer’s initial Plex implementation.

“We first started working with OWS to put them on a path to use Plex to acquire and grow organically themselves versus having to rely on an external partner,” Nowak said. “Once we started working together, we began to find other ways Plex could benefit their business including a recent project focused on their scheduling system.”

Automate scheduling process across facilities

OWS operates dry and wet manufacturing facilities in both make to order and make to stock  environments. Make to order is producing product when the customer requests it while make to stock is producing product beforehand in anticipation of customer need.

“The main scheduling lead is procurement of raw materials and packaging supplies. If you can properly put that lead time in the system then you can plan accordingly and bring that procurement in when you need it,” Farrow explained. “But previously we had a manual scheduling system with lots of Post-It notes on the monitors and no single way to see and plan for demand.”

Plex SCP provides supply chain visibility

With Control+M’s guidance, OWS implemented Plex SCP, Finite Scheduling and other platform capabilities, such as job set creation, to automate and improve scheduling, planning, and procurement.

“Plex Supply Chain Planning provides OWS with a scientific approach to forecasting customer demand,” Nowak said. “Now they can view procurement requirements for both their wet and dry facilities at one time in one place so they can get economies of scale and purchasing, reduce expedite fees, and achieve other related benefits.”

Added Farrow, “We see all our procurement and scheduling information on one screen instead of trying to find multiple sources of data.”

Employee involvement key to success

Employee input was an important first step in the new system’s development.

“OWS held a two-day scheduling summit with the procurement and scheduling people. Everyone pertinent to the situation was in one room taking the time to review the processes and how they could be better,” Nowak explained. “If more companies had the time to do that, they might see some of the success that OWS Foods did.”