Country Canada
Business Type Farming, Packer, Marketer
Business Profile: HillSide Gardens has grown from a small family operation to large producer, packer, and exporter of quality produce to multiple regions. HillSide boasts it own farming operations producing multiple fruit and vegetable varieties, packs internally produced produce, packs for multiple regional growers, and provides produce marketing services in Canada and the United States. HillSide deals with some long life produce which is stored in state of the art facilities for months, and distributed during the non production seasons. HillSide prides its operations on being innovative with business operations, and maintaining the highest possible standards for product quality.
Challenges: Implement higher traceability standards without increasing costs; to cater for increasing requirements from clients and national regulation. Manage long term storage of perishable product inventory, and implement QC.
Requirements: Traceability improvements for export, packhouse analysis and reporting, improve cost analysis of packing costs, manage multiple growers product through packing, storage, and distribution processes, implement QC
Solution: ProducePak Packhouse Management & Mobile PDA, Mobile Quality Control
"ProducePak has provided us with the seamless quality control & traceability our operation was looking for. Our customers are satisfied and confident with ProducePak traceability, and we are saving money using the excellent business analysis tools." Ron Gleason, CEO of HILL SIDE GARDENS, Canada
Main Benefits from ProducePak Packhouse :
Packhouse Traceability & QC: Implementing high levels of traceability & Quality Control throughout the entire packhouse operation has been made easy for HillSide with ProducePak’s management of produce from the moment it arrives to instant reporting on traceability after dispatch and sales. QC tests are defined for standard operations, as well as templates based on specific customer requirements. Staff performance versus QC can be analysed easily.
Cost Control & Reporting: Packing costs can now be accurately (and quickly) for produce packed based on not only grower (supplier) but also on different batches, varieties, and packing periods. Cost reporting and pack-out rates are rapidly reportable; this information makes determining purchase prices of produce more accurate and profitable as growers are paid on the merit their respective pack-out rates.
Inventory: HillSide inventory is now accurately managed for the extended life of the produce, with FIFO (First In-First Out) management being provided by ProducePak. This new facility gives reduced waste and shrinkage for the storage and dispatch operations.
"We have improved our inventory control because we now have real time data on what’s happening in the field with our PDAs. This helps to reduce spoilage and waste." Ron Gleason, CEO of HILL SIDE GARDENS, Canada
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Summary: HillSide has significantly improved traceability levels, reduced waste, increased accuracy of inventory, increased accuracy of raw produce purchases, made better sales decisions based on the cost of packing each specific type of traded unit (finished product).
For further information , please see Farm Software , Traceability Solutions , Quality Systems , Packhouse Software , Farm Traceability , Farm ERP , Packhouse Management Software , Farm To Fork
