Video: Dot Foods Case Study

TEKLYNX: When the largest food redistributor in North America needed to update its current labeling process, TEKLYNX was there to help. Dot Foods opened in 1960 and has been focused on helping companies move food products more efficiently and cost-effectively from the manufacturer to distributor.

 

Brian LeDuc, Chief Information Officer, Dot Foods: Dot Foods is North America's largest redistributor of food and related products. We like to say it's our mission to provide innovative supply chain solutions to our customers. 

 

Troy Schenk, Director of Automation, Dot Foods: We realized it was time to evaluate our labeling software at Dot as we looked at our current platform that we'd had for a long time. We were having lots of challenge in growing that in our business as we were adding new facilities and our 14 distribution centers across the country. As we were adding new capabilities within the business, we needed a platform that could grow with us.

 

TEKLYNX:  Dot Foods is responsible for efficient food redistribution for over 1,100 food manufacturers in North America. As the company grew, Dot Foods knew they needed a reliable software solution that could meet their customers' needs as well as internal requirements, with the ability to provide the bandwidth for future growth.

 

Troy Schenk: We were looking for a very reliable solution when we were looking for providers. High availability, performance, and functionality was really important to us across our 14 distribution centers. We're a 24 by 7 operation, and we needed to make sure that we could continue to run all the time, but also that we could grow and use more functions and add labels as our business grows. 

 

Brian LeDuc: We chose TEKLYNX over other options in the market primarily because of their customer service. Number one, when you make a phone call to them, you actually get a real live human and number two, those humans are usually solutions focused.

 

Scott Fabian, Enterprise Sales Engineer, TEKLYNX: When we connected with Dot Foods, we chose SENTINEL because they were already using a home grown .NET application for printing labels through a command line argument. With SENTINEL, we were able to utilize this existing system, minimize their downtime, as well as increase print speed without actually changing the user process for printing on the other side. Moving forward, Dot Foods now has the freedom to print with SENTINEL using any internal trigger, now and forever.

 

Scott Fabian, continued:  Essentially, SENTINEL monitors a file directory for incoming flat files of information. When this file is received, SENTINEL merges the data in the flat file with the label template requested and generates the necessary print code. This process allows for SENTINEL to work with pretty much any system to populate and print a label in an automated fashion.

 

TEKLYNX: Dot Foods is responsible for over 41,000 stocked products, 1,100 food manufacturers, and 14 distribution centers, so they knew that the implementation needed to be quick and easy.

 

Troy Schenk: Our implementation process for SENTINEL was really smooth and quick. We were able to work with TEKLYNX and integrate into JDA and some of our other warehouse systems very quickly. They helped us use some of our legacy file drop platforms and integrate those with minimal resources on our end. We've been able to take more advantage of some of the TEKLYNX features over time.

 

Brian LeDuc: We see TEKLYNX supporting the future growth needs of Dot Foods by looking back at the last 60 years and how we've opened new distribution centers continually. We have future plans to open more distribution centers, and we need a solution that's easy for us to roll out. 

 

TEKLYNX:  Helping companies move food products more efficiently and cost-effectively from the manufacturer to the distributor has been the main focus for Dot Foods since 1960. With their new implementation of SENTINEL, they will be able to continue growing seamlessly now and into the future. 

 

TEKLYNX, continued: Whatever your labeling needs are, TEKLYNX has a solution that can help you. Get in touch with us through our website or give us a call.