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March 26, 2019
Celebrating over 90 years of making quality pickles and peppers proves that Hausbeck Pickle Company must be doing it right. This family-owned and run business has a proud history of delivering what its customers want, when they want it.
It all goes back to the company’s largest asset: inventory. For Hausbeck, the ability to track inventory from seed through production to customer shipment is critical. Like other food and beverage manufacturers, Hausbeck’s inventory is at risk to spoil or become contaminated and having real-time visibility into the production process can be a true advantage to preventing customers from receiving bad products.
In 2016, Hausbeck moved to the Plex Manufacturing Cloud for complete end-to-end traceability, quality, and inventory management. Before Plex each department kept track of inventory movements on multiple spreadsheets. Now anyone with access to system can pull up traceability information with the click of a mouse. In addition, capturing production as it happens gives Hausbeck real-time visibility during the fermentation process and even all the way back to the seed to ensure quality specifications are met every step of the way. If something doesn’t meet requirements, operations staff are alerted so proactive intervention can take place before the product ships. This is important for food and beverage manufacturers to prevent recalls. For Hausbeck, demonstrating comprehensive traceability proved successful during a mock recall for a customer audit. Using the production date, the team was able to track ingredients identified by the auditor within minutes.
One of the Hausbeck’s biggest customers, Subway, rates suppliers based on scorecards, and demonstrating comprehensive traceability is a major requirement. Virginia Palinsky, CFO for Hausbeck, says it’s this ability that has made Hausbeck a strategic partner for Subway.
“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. “We were one of Subway’s first suppliers to provide digital reporting, and that’s because we had Plex.”
Read more about Hausbeck Pickle Company here.
About the Author
Lori Zoellner Director of Corporate Communications, Plex Systems
Lori is responsible for managing and directing Plex's communications strategies. She works closely with Plex customers to ensure that their stories are told and also manages the Plex Customer Advisory Board. She has 20+ years of experience in communications, public relations, advertising, and marketing. Lori has a bachelor’s degree in English from Michigan State University.
