Illes Seasonings & Flavors Integration

Companies with any significant production and distribution responsibilities typically experience less than optimal process flow without proper planning and scheduling.As production grew for Illes Seasonings & Flavors, they realized they needed a more robust scheduling system. Problems with communication and varying response times for incidents lead to difficulties in maintaining an accurate production schedule.

The Case

Illes Seasonings & Flavors has made various food ingredients for more than 85 years. They’re a privately held company that has a proud legacy of innovating and developing unique flavors with an entrepreneurial spirit. Based out of Dallas, Texas, Illes has expanded into a national food powerhouse that continues to provide quality products and excellent customer service within their industry.

Today they work with the largest retailers, food processors, national restaurant chains, and food manufacturers across the nation. This sustained growth, however, presented a manufacturing challenge for Illes. As a result, they looked to PlanetTogether to optimize their production schedule.

Rising to the Challenge

Illes went through a 6-month Proof of Concept before committing to PlanetTogether. Following their purchase, they experienced immediate results. “Before it took hours to schedule [our production] manually because scheduling was based on reports, now it only takes seconds,” said Les Howell, Executive Director of IT.

Following implementation, communication improved between planners and departments. Other enhancements include a better response time for instances such as expedited production, order change, and capacity availability requests. After seeing early results, Illes can now have a greater focus on long-term planning and scheduling.

Why PlanetTogether?

“PlanetTogether's software is by far the best and most encompassing planning software package offered today,” said Ed Czysz, Illes’ Production Scheduling Manager. By implementing planning software, Illes can react swiftly to an unforeseen impact that may potentially affect the system.

Drawing information from all departments within the company, the scheduling tool helps expose areas where processes are weak. Namely, the Gantt chart tool with label features made quick work of identifying late/early jobs, material shortages, and job statuses.

With the help of planning and scheduling software, Illes continues to be at the forefront of technology as an industry leader in food production.