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fourtec systems enable us to meet brewery and winery regulatory guidelines within our budget, with ease and efficiency and very little staff maintenance.
About the customer:
Name: Dienst Distributing Company
Company HQ: Texas
Industry: Wholesale distributor of beers and wines.
Dienst Distributing Company, an alcohol distributor in Texas, was founded in 1948 and is fully licensed by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms & the Texas Alcoholic Beverage commission as Importers & Wholesalers of Alcoholic Beverages. Dienst Distributing have exclusive distribution agreements on many of their products. The company sells its products to retailers and other wholesalers within Texas and throughout North America via the statewide delivery system centralized through the warehouse operation in Texas. The company aims to provide products of the highest quality, at the most competitive pricing. Headquartered in Texas, the company employs 80 people and distributes around 1.9 million cases of beer and wines a year.
We spoke with Andy Correa, Operations Manager, to find out how the fourtec wireless system ensures Dienst Distributing Co. avoid heavy profit losses from bad stock and make better use of their staff's valuable time. The system helps Dienst to continue to meet their promise of providing customers with wines and beers of only the highest quality using the most cost effective system.
What Business Challenges do you face?
Well obviously there are food health and safety regulations but on top of that we must meet strict guide lines set by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms & the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission as well as the respective breweries and wineries regarding the temperatures of products. Just a little too hot or cold and the products can spoil.
What Business Risks do you face by not Meeting This Challenge?
The potential profit loss is huge since on any given day our inventory in the warehouse is between 35 to 40 days worth of stock. If the environment they are stored in is not monitored so that it stays at the required temperature then all of that stock becomes worthless. Just to give an idea of potential losses, one day's inventory is worth $300,000 - $400,000.
What Made You Decide Your Old System Was No Longer Enough?
We had a normal thermostat device in each section of the warehouse but it wasn't an accurate or reliable method. What's more our staff had to go out and manually record the data up to three times a day. This became even harder when new brewery regulations required average daily, weekly and monthly temperature readings. Not only was this manually intensive, but there was also the risk of human error. Our warehouse is about 38,000 square feet and it would take an employee about an hour to go round to all the thermostats and gather temperatures. It took another hour to calculate averages, notate, record and re-verify. We had to do this a number of times a day.
What first attracted you to the fourtec solution?
With fourtec products we can now get a reading every ten, or thirty seconds. The data is automatically downloaded and the software calculates for us the average for the day, week or month and provides soft or hard copies of data reports.
Three people use the product: the Warehouse Operator, Manager of Operations and Assistant Manager and they find the whole process has become easier and much less complicated. The monitoring no longer requires much human intervention and data is automatically downloaded to spreadsheets. Even if you have the most basic computer skills you'll find the software easy to use.
What Was Your Decision Making Process?
Our main priority when looking around at the solutions available was to find something that would be easy to use and not require too much hands-on supervision. Most of the other units we looked at required our staff to physically go out and actually manipulate the data logger in order to get it to do what they wanted and download the data. That wasn't much of an improvement on our old thermostats. We found with the fourtec product, because it was wireless, you don't have to go anywhere near the data logger. You just program it when you first install it and from then on every day pull the data up already in a spreadsheet and calculated out for you and that's it - you're done.
What Other Reasons Made You Decide On fourtec's Solution?
At the end of the day it was the most cost effective the solution. While some basic data loggers may of cost less, once you added the hidden costs of wireless connectivity and software their cost would of by far exceeded that of the fourtec product, so there's no doubt it was worth it in the end to buy fourtec.
What Has Been Your Experience Of fourtec Customer Services?
We found that we weren't just sold a product and then left to get on with it. We received consistent technical support. Your sales staff was very helpful in providing step by step instructions and setting everything up to the last detail. Setting up the fourtec loggers and software, probably took about 30 minutes.
What's Your Last Word?
"fourtec systems enable us to meet brewery and winery regulatory guidelines within our budget, with ease and efficiency and very little staff maintenance.
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