Delivering Fresh Data

Dean Foods is one of the leading food and beverage companies in the United States and the largest processor and distributor of milk and other dairy products. Through its White Wave and Horizon Organic subsidiaries, it is also the nation's leading manufacturer of soymilk, organic milk and other organic foods. Its Specialty Foods Group is a leading manufacturer of pickles and specialty food products. It operates more than 110 plants in the United States and Spain.

The Challenge

Over the years Dean Foods has acquired several new businesses, which operate as independent business units. Dean Foods looked to webMethods to help address two key challenges so that the right people could have the right information at the right time.

As a result of company acquisitions, Dean Foods acquired a challenging number of new and inconsistent SKUs and UPC codes. There was inconsistent data between business units for the same products and a lengthy process to find and validate the data that customers needed. There were also multiple levels of descriptions for the same product. In addition, tracking product formulas for all of the flavors within business units created inaccuracies and complexity that slowed the item maintenance process.

"Dean Foods saw the same need to respond to demand driven process improvements as everybody else in the industry," says Keith Markbreiter, manager, business process integration, Dean Foods. "There is a lot of data out there in our companies and the question is how do we leverage that data? How do we make it work for us and for our customers?"

Integration Initiatives

Dean Foods has integrated 50 end users (using webMethods Workflow and webMethods Portal) across 32 independent business units into the new enterprise-wide process. webMethods aggregated data from different sources and different applications into a single repository, then distributed the data across multiple business units and customers.

"This had the greatest impact on our ability to get the right data to the right place at the right time," says Markbreiter.

In addition, overhead costs were lowered, plus more accurate data was now located within a single repository. The new process automatically checks records to assure that they are valid and in synchronization with other regions, enabling Dean Foods to reduce the overhead normally required to manage data complexity and handle exceptions.

Human Workflow Meets Automation

According to Markbreiter, webMethods Workflow has been the single differentiator for Dean Foods because as a large company, Dean Foods has many different touch points, sources and targets for the data.

In order to automate the process, human interaction is needed, while at the same time making sure there are no disconnects. Dean Foods decided to leverage webMethods Fabric to create a Master Item Synchronization Process that ensured consistent data use across multiple business units and customers -- a process that adhered to industry and customer mandates for information and involved end users from different functional areas of the business. These users would be involved in item setup and maintenance activities to validate data accuracy.

The system provides end-to-end integration of information, plus simplified EDI transactions and related processes via EDIINT/AS2. webMethods Workflow and webMethods Portal bring together end users from different areas of the business to support best practices and ensure visibility and accuracy of item information. No one individual owns the product data but everyone has a part in ensuring consistency and accuracy.

Dean Foods employed the use of a webMethods item canonical to describe products used by different business units and customers. At Dean Foods, the ability to achieve consistency and accuracy with product information across the company and with multiple customers has been largely driven by the company's commitment to and adoption of a single process leveraging a single item canonical.

Center of Excellence

"Being able to allow your users to have the say, the voice, the flexibility of where they can interact with that information, and collaborate as part of that process is key," mentions Markbreiter. "We've got better tools now such as webMethods to allow us to do that. When you tie that into the existing best practices of your company, you become a center of excellence for managing data across your organization and customers. This is how we've been successful."