To obtain annual dairy and related food sales topping $1.3 billion, WestFarm Foods, the processing and marketing arm of the Northwest Dairy Association, moves a lot of product very efficiently. But they're always looking for ways to improve.
Challenge: From silo to loading dock, the WestFarm Foods operation is temperature controlled. But when product is loaded on trucks, it doesn't always leave immediately. So WestFarm would keep the load on the truck, parked in the yard as temporary warehouse space. Although the trucks are, of course, refrigerated, they were not automatically monitored; someone from the plant had to check them periodically, and when a reefer went out, there was no record of how long it had been down. "Storing in the yard worked", states Crawford. "Only every once in awhile, the reefer would go out on a trailer, and although we were checking the temperatures, we'd miss the critical timing, and lose a load."