Harvest Food Group (HFG) is a family-owned business based in Naperville, Illinois. The company leads the food and beverage industry in individually-quick-frozen (IQF) foods, supplying quality fruits, vegetables, grains and more across the globe. With a manufacturing plant in Chicago, HFG also serves as a collaborative co-packing solution and produces private label products for grocers. Additionally, the company created a retail line called Path of Life, which specializes in high quality, frozen side dishes made with clean and simple ingredients.

Overcoming Production Obstacles

Founded in 1999, by father and son duo Philip and Jason Eckert, with only two telephones and a dial-up modem, Harvest Food Group has evolved into a leading manufacturer in the food and beverage industry as it strives to create products with clean and thoughtfully sourced ingredients from growers across the world. As the Harvest Food Group portfolio grew to encompass family-owned start-ups to international suppliers and everything in between, the company recognized a gap in its existing, paper-based system. While this framework tracked items produced and the business finances, it was otherwise limited in its capabilities.

One significant issue stood out: the old system required manual confirmation of invoices on the final day of each month. Consequently, the team needed to run all reports the night prior to a new month, forcing Harvest Food Group to halt production as they carried out this tedious process. In instances where production began too soon, reporting started over from the beginning. This timeframe also required employees in finance to stay at the facility until late to ensure invoice completion.

This system was not only demanding for the team, but also a strain on business.

With so few records housed in their current system, recalls and instances that required historical information left employees scattered, searching through boxes of paper files. Harvest Food Group also had zero plant floor visibility, so while they could see when production lines were running, additional details were scarce. There were also significant gaps in data due to manually recorded downtime—this lack of visibility and digitization made Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) a mere pipedream for the Harvest Food Group team.

Company Alignment

Due to an overall lack of accountability and data integrity, coupled with the desire for a more advanced system that could grow as business evolved, Harvest Food Group decided to implement Plex ERP and MES. The original system could no longer meet the company’s growing needs, so the team had high hopes for Plex’s ability to not only fill in the existing gaps, but also to drive business forward with additional improvements.

As the implementation began, Harvest Food Group worked alongside a Plex project manager to stay on track. All employees were granted access to the Plex training environment, which gave them step-by-step implementation instructions. The team also utilized a Gantt chart that illustrated the 16-phase go-live process in detail, broken down both by department and module within Plex. These assets provided a comprehensive view of the expectations and guidelines needed to successfully implement Plex.

Harvest Food Group’s initial go-live date was pushed by five months to ensure that the team was well-versed and fully comfortable before completing the process. Different team members became directly involved as each module was implemented, testing operations and ensuring data accuracy before moving on to the next step in the process. This allowed for a thorough understanding of Plex through each phase of the implementation, solidifying the decision to go-live later than initially planned.

Since implementation, Harvest Food Group has seen significant improvements in production shutdowns, which occurred once a month for manual invoices, and an additional one week per year for full inventory counts. The company has not experienced any halts in production to complete these processes.

Accounts Receivable (AR) aging has also decreased from 5% to 1.6%, indicating that the company is now able to collect receivables more efficiently. With Plex, Harvest Food Group has historical data and real-time production information, allowing the team to be flexible and on top of any shortages or overages. Additionally, Harvest Food Group has seen cycle count accuracy increase from 6% to 98%, which has drastically improved inventory management and helped to decrease manual labor.

Increased traceability and real-time data allow the Harvest Food Group team to see immediate results and continued improvement of scrap and OEE digitalization.