Baldwin Foods Looks at Quality with Rugged Mobile Computing with LXE

Baldwin Richardson Foods, headquartered inthe handling and storage of finished products relied
Frankfort, Illinois, with manufacturing facility inon fork-truck drivers using paperwork. Raw
Macedon, New York, produces bakery fillings,materials were delivered to “cook decks”
syrups, sauces, toppings, beverage mixes,where cooks manually recorded the contents and
condiments packets, and other food products.amounts of each ingredient used in a batch.
“Our operations were all manual. We wantedCompleted products were stacked in cases on
to automate and had looked into different barpallets at the end of the production lines.
coding systems over the years, but nothing wasFork-truck drivers cruised among any of the five
the right fit,” says Craig Czajka, the ITto seven lines running that day, looking for full
manager at Baldwin Richardson Foods.pallets, which they would pick up and deliver to a
 staging area for transfer to Baldwin Richardson
Mobile data collection systems provide real-timeFoods’ distribution facility. Paper order tickets
visibility for batch traceability, raw materials levels,informed drivers of the truck bay to deliver each
and finished goods inventory.  Innovativepallet. Some production runs last for three days;
vehicle-mounted, hand-held, and wearable mobileothers are completed in a shift. During production
computers must be dependable, tough, andruns there were very few updates to the ERP
reliable. Wireless computers extend corporatesystem when drivers relied on paperwork.
networks to mobile workers in demandingBacklogs developed and jobs often were not
conditions and only rugged mobile computers driveclosed until three to six days after the actual
down costs and improve customer satisfaction.production run ended. Because there were very
 few updates during production, data in the ERP
 system was often several days behind, making it
Based in Norcross, Georgia, LXE offered Baldwindifficult to accurately manage inventory.
Richardson Foods a full range of turnkey services, 
including radio integration, project and installationAccording to Wayne Baxter, of BaxTek Solutions,
management, network design, technical support,in Snellville, Georgia, a leading systems integrator
and repair services. LXE helped the companythat works closely with LXE in the quality
transition to real-time visibility and gain controlPartnerPass program, “The increasingly
over raw materials, production status, andsignificant role of food traceability makes the
inventory transfers, warehousing, and distributionvalue of collecting real-time data less of an option
to customers. “Bar coding doesn’t fixand more of a necessity. Finding vendors with
things, it just makes things faster,” saysrugged data collection products is absolutely
Czajka. “We had to fix our processes first.essential. We found that in cold-storage food
The knowledge LXE had about working with ourplants and other food processing and warehousing
Ross ERP system was very valuable to us. Somesituations, LXE has a vital role in HACCP [Hazard
of the other vendors we looked at had started toAnalysis Critical Control Points].”
support Ross, but they weren’t there 
yet.”BaxTek Solutions ( is one of the leading Systems
 Integrators in the barcode verification, data
LXE helped Baldwin Richardson Foods design acollection, and supply chain industry that offers a
wireless network and mobile data collectiondiverse suite of products including RFID, RF
systems to support new processes that provideTerminals, Printers, Wireless Access Points,
real-time visibility for batch traceability, rawSoftware, Remote Portable Terminal and Printer
materials levels, and finished goods inventory.Management and Repair Services.  The company
 specializes in traceability and tracking solutions for
Previously, production was carefully controlled, butthe food industry from "farm to fork.