Litehouse Foods Controls Inventory with Radley Data Collection

Litehouse Foods, Inc., a manufacturer of fresh dressing, dips and sauces, was experiencing challenges with their manufacturing productivity. Litehouse saw a need to better serve their hundreds of customers in the United States and Canada, such as, Albertson’s, Wal-Mart, Kroger, Safeway, Bashas, Spartan Stores and Costco. Litehouse was recently named one of Managing Automation’s 50 Progressive Manufacturers. Litehouse uses fresh ingredients and their products need to be refrigerated. The use of such high-quality ingredients causes their products to have short shelf-lives. Any delay in getting their products on store shelves will cause them to lose valuable business.

Productivity Challenges

One of Litehouse’s biggest challenges was the lack of confidence in their inventory accuracy.

Litehouse had to carry hefty inventory levels, increasing carry costs and putting pressure on valuable warehouse space. Litehouse also had challenges with inventory rotations of products with shelf life concerns.

Litehouse’s existing manufacturing process required employees to manually record quantities and lot numbers for every transaction. This procedure caused Litehouse employees to spend an excessive amount of time tracking down errors in reporting. Since transactions were recorded manually they did not have a real-time view of work-in-process or inventory levels. The delay from the manual entry could be as long as 4 hours. This delay caused slow downs in the shipping department, especially in the time it took for employees to be notified when products were completed. The shipping department would wait to be notified that products that needed to be shipped were waiting to be picked and assembled for orders. Litehouse recognized that these delays were impacting their business so they made the decision to automate their processes.

The Radley Solution

Automated data collection solution to ensure real-time, accurate data

Litehouse was introduced to Radley Corporation through their ERP provider. Radley’s data collection platform provides real-time integration to the ERP system. This platform, coupled with Radley’s experience with other food processors, provided a foundation for streamlining Litehouse’s manufacturing processes.

The Radley solution focuses on improving workforce productivity, process improvement and automation. Features such as Radley’s IntelliLabel (label license plating) helped turbo charge the data collection process while real-time integration for each bar code scanned insures data accuracy and integrity.

Productivity Improvements

After Litehouse’s successful implementation, Litehouse has seen productivity improvements in production, picking, and inventory.

The increase in productivity was so significant that Litehouse was able to reassign personnel to more valuable tasks within the company. Their inventory control team spends less time chasing inventory discrepancies and more time on valuable tasks such as continually improving processes and procedures. Since pallets are now being recorded in real-time at the point of production, Litehouse’s data entry personnel no longer have to systematically count every pallet coming off the shop floor. This has reduced errors tremendously and removed the lag-time between production and picking for orders. Product can now be picked for an order immediately once it comes off the manufacturing floor. Prior to data collection, the goods were unavailable to dispatch for between 30 minutes to 4 hours while the data entry was being performed.

“Radley’s Data Collection Solution was part of the reason we could reduce our finished goods inventory from 14 days to 8-9 days”, notes Litehouse CIO John Shaw,”The most important benefit is definitely inventory accuracy. This allowed us to lower our inventory levels and release the money we had tied up in finished goods inventory.”

“One of the greatest accomplishments Radley aided us with is the confidence our users now have in the inventory. As a result of location control and lower inventory levels we’ve been able to cultivate a level of confidence within the user community that we never had in the past.” Notes Senior Systems Analyst, Megan Owens, “While I’ve found Radley’s product line to be exceptional, I must say it is their outstanding customer service and support that blows me away. In this area, they are unrivaled.”