Beyond the Basics
by James Dudlicek
Strategic improvements have helped Pierre’s
streamline its plant operations.
The day starts at 5 a.m. No, this isn’t a dairy farm. It’s when the flavor man arrives to start setting up, get the freezers ready for the day’s production, which begins at 7.
By 7:30, freezing starts and runs through at least 3:30
p.m. In between, 48 scrounds and 60 pints every minute are filled with
Pierre’s Ice Cream. At the end of the shift, the mix crew comes in to
prepare mix for the next day.
This cycle occurs five times in a typical week at the
Pierre’s plant in Cleveland. Technology has been upgraded, but the
basics have stayed the same for the past half-century at this facility,
which manufactures about 300 SKUs of Pierre’s branded and private
label ice cream and frozen desserts.
“There’s always going to be new stuff on
the horizon,” says brand development manager John Pimpo.
One of the most significant new things is the
installation of integrated business management software, “to help
track costs and better track efficiencies for planning purposes,”
plant manager John Gaughan explains. Sales and delivery teams go into the
field wielding hand-held computers and cellular phones with custom software
and order-entry tools. Pierre’s also uses a radio frequency inventory
control and stock rotation system.
The company’s state-of-the-art distribution
center, which opened in 1995 along with a new corporate office building,
features modern efficiencies such as a penthouse that allows easy access
for monitoring and repairs. The shipping dock area is kept at 32 degrees F
to maintain product integrity during load-in and load-out. Automatic pallet
wrappers secure all orders before they get loaded onto the trucks. In
addition to the Pierre’s brand product line, the center handles 500
SKUs of national brand ice cream, novelties and frozen desserts.
During the day, the distribution center receives
product from the nearby production plant and national suppliers; it ships
load-outs at night to complete a nearly round-the-clock operation.
The distribution center features two power sources as a
safeguard against local power outages. This safeguard was put to the
ultimate test a few years ago during a massive blackout that impacted most
of the northeastern United States. “The entire grid of northeast Ohio
went out,” Pimpo recalls. “When the entire grid goes down, for
the entire half of the country, it was tough for us to hold. But the great
thing about our facility, during the 24 hours that we were down, we only
gained four degrees [of temperature] in our entire distribution
facility.”
Launching the 40,000-square-foot distribution center
allowed Pierre’s to expand capacity at its manufacturing plant, where
production of novelties had already been moved off site to free up more
room for filling half gallons (now 56-ounce scrounds), pints and bulk
containers.
The manufacturing plant — which dates back to the
1920s and was retrofitted for ice cream production in the ’50s
— is a compact yet flexible facility that has received its share of
upgrades to keep pace with technological advancements in the industry.
“As we’ve progressed, we’ve updated tanks and other
pieces of equipment,” Gaughan says. “We have a couple of new
shrink-wrappers out there, irrigator pumps, plate chiller —
that’s something that saves us quite a bit of energy. We just
continue to evaluate where we think we can make the best return on our
investments.”
In and Out
Pierre’s receives 700,000 pounds of dairy
ingredients every month from farms and suppliers in Ohio and other
Midwestern states.
Dry and liquid ingredients are mixed in the blend vats
before pasteurization. The completed mix is then sent to one of eight mix
tanks, depending on which of the various products for which it’s
intended. Pierre’s uses 35 types of mix, including a no-sugar-added
blend for the company’s Slender® line of products.
Mix is pumped to the flavor vats for the creation
individual varieties of ice cream and may pick up some inclusions from the
fruit feeder while en route to the freezers.
Pierre’s fills pints, scrounds and bulk cans
simultaneously among its different lines. Several years ago, the company
made the switch from round half-gallon containers to 56-ounce scrounds for
its main lines of ice cream and frozen yogurt products, mirroring the
industry trend.
A lid descrambler makes sure each container is topped
off properly as they move from the filler to the shrink-wrapper, where
scrounds are wrapped in bundles of three and pints on cardboard flats of
eight before heading to the blast freezer.
Finished products are stored among the 4,000 pallet
spaces in the freezer at the distribution center, kept at a constant -25
degrees F. The Pierre’s consumer Web site notes that the
company’s frozen warehouse holds the equivalent of 36 million scoops
of ice cream.
Delivery to retailers and foodservice operators in
Pierre’s own trucks is streamlined by the aforementioned
computerization of stock-tracking and order-entry duties.
Safe and Sound
At the heart of safety initiatives at Pierre’s
is its HACCP program, which the company takes pride in noting has been
recognized by the state of Ohio and used as an example for other
manufacturers. The program was further enhanced last year.
“We have a pretty hearty HACCP program that was
put in place three years ago. It covers all aspects of food
handling,” Gaughan says, noting the company thoroughly screens its
ingredient suppliers.
“As raw materials come in, we have procedures to
check and make sure the load is what they say it is, it’s all
accounted for, and they check for tampering. They also label for allergens;
we store things segregated so we don’t have any cross-contamination.
Every load comes in with COAs [certificates of analysis], either prior to
or at receiving. We have a program where we go through and check all the
raw materials. We do taste testing. We do evaluation of color, size, any
attributes that should be there. We do micro testing on all
those.”
While the industry is moving to have suppliers be even
more accountable for ingredient guarantees prior to shipment,
Pierre’s has taken the initiative to go beyond basic requirements,
performing extra tests to ensure the highest-quality finished products. The
company submits to third-party audits as well.
“We do listeria testing on every finished product
that we make, which is not required. Most plants don’t do it —
you’d probably be hard-pressed to find one that does,” Gaughan
says. “Nothing is released from the production building over to the
distribution building until it clears all the batteries of tests. Each
product is evaluated daily by the operator, by the flavor man, by our
quality manager.”
Another area increasing in importance over the past
five years is traceability. Pierre’s implemented a thorough
contingency-planning manual not long after 9/11, notes Laura Hindulak,
director of marketing.
“We wanted to look at what was happening in the
industry, what was happening with terrorism: What could we do as a
food-producing plant to make sure we are safe and can trace things
properly?” she says. “We have a meeting every year to update
the manual. It has all the contact numbers for our suppliers, the majority
of our buyers and folks we do business with. At the end of that meeting
every year, we have a mock recall where we take a specific lot number of a
product and trace back not only from production and ingredients, but to the
distribution side to find out where those materials came from and where
that finished product ended up. We can know within two hours exactly where
that product came from and where that product went.”
With a constant eye on food safety and regulatory
compliance, the Pierre’s production team spent the past two years
working toward the labeling revisions to comply with allergen and trans-fat
regulations, as well as the new bioterrorism security requirements for food
processors.
Meanwhile, regarding its employees, Pierre’s is
dedicated to its very comprehensive safety-awareness program. The company
has several safety committees made up of members from every department.
These task teams meet monthly to survey their work environments and suggest
ways to improve or enhance safety within their areas of responsibility.
Employees receive continual safety and operational
training. “Our entire company focuses on making safety first,”
Hindulak says. “To reinforce this message, Pierre’s puts out
its ‘Scoop on Safety’ monthly newsletter that highlights
specific safety topics, and teams remaining injury-free for each 30-day
period are rewarded for their accomplishment.”
Making it Work
Pierre’s has made numerous additions, changes and
enhancements to its manufacturing facility throughout the years it has been
in business.
The company has expanded the low-temperature storage
area at its production facility and performed a complete overhaul and
upgrade of the engine room. As needed to keep pace with the times and
demand for product, Pierre’s has acquired new tanks, fillers,
freezers, fruit feeders and shrink-wrapping equipment. As business
continued to expand, the pasteurizing, homogenizing and clean-in-place
equipment were updated.
Of course, everything costs money, and controlling the
costs involved with manufacturing continue to be a significant challenge,
even beyond the nuts and bolts.
“The cost of raw ingredients, utilities,
packaging and labor are constantly monitored, and we strive to achieve
efficiencies in each of these areas,” Hindulak says. “In terms
of suppliers, we work closely with our vendors to not only improve quality,
but to reduce costs through adjusted order sizes, frequencies and accurate
forecasting. This approach allows greater flexibility on the supplier side,
helping them to lower their costs which allows them to extend lower costs
to manufacturers like ourselves.”
Pierre’s Ice Cream
PLANT AT A GLANCE
Location: Cleveland,
Ohio
Opened: Built in
the 1920s as a warehouse, converted in the ’50s for processing; new
distribution center opened 1995.
Size: 10,000
square feet on a 12-acre campus.
Employees: 60
Products made: Ice
cream, sherbet, frozen yogurt and sorbet.
Capacity: 8 million
gallons
Milk storage: 12 tanks
for raw and pasteurized products, plus four sweetener tanks
Processing: One HTST
system
Filling: Four
lines for 56-ounce scrounds, pints and bulk containers.
Cooler storage: 14,000-square-foot
freezer; 40,000 square feet (4,000 pallet spaces) in distribution center.
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