Ice Cream Manufacturer Tackles Inventory and Quality Challenges with Rockwell Plex

Rockwell Automation and Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream Company shared at this month's Ice Cream & Cultured Innovation Conference how the ice cream producer is positioning its manufacturing operations for continued growth with enhanced production, quality and inventory management.

Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream started as a family-owned ice cream shop in 1962 in Madison, Wisconsin. Today, the company supplies its ice cream to more than 800 scoop shops and restaurants nationwide, as well as private-label manufacturers. To better support its ongoing growth, the company recently adopted the Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform, which includes multiple Plex technologies. To date, the platform has helped the company:

• Achieve 95% inventory accuracy, a 27% improvement.
• Reduce raw material inventory by 18%.
• Reduce on-hand inventory management work by 3-4 hours.

The Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform replaced two separate systems the ice cream maker previously used to track production. Those systems didn't always communicate properly and required production data to be manually entered. This took up precious time and resulted in staff working with out-of-date information, making it difficult to trust production and inventory data.

With the Plex Manufacturing Execution System (MES), Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream staff now have access to readily available production data to see what's happening throughout the manufacturing facility at any time. This includes being able to now see product loss and waste factors with Plex's Batch Management functionality, which has helped the company boost yield.

The Plex Quality Management System (QMS) replaced manual, paper-based quality tracking in the Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream manufacturing facility. This has helped the company better meet customer-specific needs, comply with industry regulations and prepare for audits. Now, traceability is instantaneous, not an hours-long process, and staff can better communicate with customers about quality checks during production runs.

"One of the biggest functions the Plex platform has helped us improve is inventory management," said Sarah Deadman, chief operating officer, Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream Company. "Previously, inventory was tracked using multiple systems and employee knowledge. Inevitably, employees would spend time searching the building for materials, which risked creating production delays. Now, everyone in the building can know where product is at any point in time."

With the Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform in place, Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream is now exploring automating more of its production operations as it continues to grow its business.

"As food manufacturers grow, they need systems that give them full visibility into their operations and more efficient ways of working," said Michael Hart, head of product – industry strategy & growth, Rockwell Automation. "The Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform gives Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream a connected foundation that supports operational improvements today and continued growth and increased automation in the future."

Learn more about the Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform here.

plex.rockwellautomation.com/en-us/smart-manufacturing-platform.html