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West Liberty, IA

West Liberty Foods, L.L.C. is a highly successful co-packer and private label manufacturer of sliced processed meat, poultry, and cheese products, headquartered in West Liberty, Iowa, with facilities in:

  • West Liberty, Iowa
  • Mount Pleasant, Iowa
  • Sigourney, Iowa
  • Tremonton, Utah

WLF produces prepared turkey, beef, chicken, and pork products for companies such as Subway, Hormel, Oscar Mayer, Wal-Mart, and CostCo through state-of-the-art processing facilities, innovative research and development, and a commitment to producing the highest quality food products for all of its customers, large and small. Over the years, WLF has received numerous awards from Subway, the National Council Of Farmer Cooperatives, the Iowa Recycling Association, the Iowa-Illinois Safety Council and Hormel Foods.

Corporate Website

http://www.wlfoods.com

GOALS:

  • Create a corporate website for West Liberty Foods to showcase their food service, retail and wholesale product lines
  • Provide a media outlet for West Liberty Foods to inform website visitors of relevant news and press articles, plant locations, environmental certifications, company management, and company history
  • Allow pre-approved users to log into a secure area of the website so as to access and download internal documentation, forms and procedures
  • Give West Liberty Foods a means of creating and managing career opportunities in and across their various locations with additional details and contact information provided for each job
  • Provide an online, content-management system that allows employees within the company to manage website pages and content
SOLUTIONS:
disEntropy started by meeting with key administrative, marketing, and technical staff at West Liberty Foods to discuss the goals of the website as well as to establish a common vision of the design, development and implementation process. After this initial meeting, disEntropy drew up in-depth functional specifications for the website and provided West Liberty Foods with a wireframe template for approval. With the wireframe in hand, disEntropy worked with an integrated marketing firm in Chicago to create design compositions showing the layout and visual aspects of what the proposed website would look like.

West Liberty Foods approved of the design compositions from the very start and asked for several Flash components to also be added to the site in order to provide motion as well as to highlight the ever-changing and nimble nature of the products and services that they offer. These Flash components were quickly infused into the design and develop process along with an area of the website giving West Liberty Foods the ability to manage jobs postings and career opportunities across their various locations.

Through a robust, content management system, designed and developed by disEntropy, West Liberty Foods now has the ability to update and manage their site online. This includes page content, page titles, descriptions and keywords, job postings, images and product details as well as internal documentation that is available through a secure area of the website.

Log in names and passwords for the secure area of the website are assigned and maintained by West Liberty Foods along with the documents themselves, user information, which users have access to which documents and which document categories are available to which users.
Product Specification Editor

GOALS:

  • Design an internal, quality management system to organize and track changes to material specifications, product attributes, changing quality standards, labels, and hazardous materials listings
  • Accept and report feedback regarding the items mentioned above
  • Allow for internal and external use of the system using a secure methodology that is manageable by the IT department at West Liberty Foods
SOLUTIONS:
The first step was to develop a detailed functional specification which laid out all of the areas of the system in relation to one another. From there, we designed a product and attribute management system that would incorporate these needs as well as allow for the other functional areas to be easily integrated and maintained. Once that was in place, we added a feedback and support mechanisms to account for changes and improvements in the quality process, material handling and the system itself. In addition to all of this, we added a way to track modifications and modification histories for every aspect of the system and then set up both internal and external logon entry points to the system.

TESTIMONIALS:
"We contracted disEntropy to build our food-product specification database. The resulting project, in conjunction with their web-hosting services, provided a foundation for our company Intranet. Their attention to detail during the design phase ensured a smooth implementation, and post-implementation service remains exemplary! We look forward to a long-lasting partnership!"
Dave McDowell, IT Manager
Training Manager

GOALS:

  • Design and develop a Corporate Training Management tool that accounts for the creation and tracking of courses in addition to recording and reporting on the courses taken by each of WLF's 1800 employees.
  • Account for each job in each department at each location having potentially different training requirements and run reports based on previous training as well as upcoming training that is due.
  • Provide tools for Training Managers and Coordinators to easily track which employees attended which classes by electronically reading employee badges with a hand-held scanner.
  • Synchronize external employee information on a daily basis with 3rd party Human Resources Management software already employed by WLF 
SOLUTIONS:
After meeting with the training managers and coordinators throughout all of the WLF facilities, disEntropy drafted a series of in-depth functional specifications detailing each area of the proposed training application and what part each module played in the system as a whole. Based on these specifications - as well as existing training forms, reports, and OSHA requirements - disEntropy worked closely with WLF training staff to design and develop a Corporate Training Management tool that creates and manages courses, stores and manages employee information, records and reports on employee training, tracks individual as well as group training, and manages the interrelation of jobs, departments and locations.

Once the base Corporate Training Management tools were in place, disEntropy worked with WLF to develop a methodology for synchronizing 3rd party human resource data with the training application, including the reconciliation of discrepancies between employees, jobs and departments.

All of these tools were then integrated with the existing WLF intranet which houses the Product Specification Editor, the Lab Sample Quality Manager, as well as an Intranet Administrative Console.

TESTIMONIALS: 
"I hope you realize that Adriana (our bilingual trainer), Sandy, and I have been simply amazed at how you and Josiah have been able to work this miracle. We can not begin to imagine how you are able to think of such a master piece and then to put it together and have it work….. Amazing!!!"
Monica Dyer, West Liberty Foods
Lab Sample Quality Manager

GOALS:

  • Create tools to manage the areas, sections, zones, and swab sites to be used in the collection of batch samples
  • Provide tools to create templates for recurring batch samples, including the scheduling of batch sample collections on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis
  • Create tools to define the types of tests to be performed, the metrics by which they will be measured as well as the methods and equipment to be used in testing 
  • Provide tools to manage the list of available network printers to be used for the printing of batch and sample labels by WLF employees based on assigned roles and employee location
  • Provide tools for creating and managing batch samples, listing the batch samples to be collected, and marking the collected batch samples as ready for shipment to the WLF Lab for further processing
  • Create tools for the WLF Lab to mark shipped batch samples as received, review a list of tests needing to be done for each sample, enter in the results of each test, and automatically email the Quality Manager(s) associated with each batch once testing is complete.
SOLUTIONS:
disEntropy began the project by first meeting with the Quality Control managers at WLF to assess the needs of the system, draw up detailed functional specifications on the modules needed, and establish boundaries for total project cost and timeline.   Following this initial meeting, disEntropy developed an extensive set of flowcharts, use-case scenarios, preliminary screen designs and supplemental documentation needed in order to align the proposed project plan for the Lab Sample Quality Management system with WLF's visions and expectations for the project.

After sign-off to begin development and programming, disEntropy started creating screens for the system.  This included screens to be used for managing areas, sections, zones and swab sites, for creating batches, samples and templates, for defining tests, test metrics and test methods, for designating and assigning label printers, for marking batch samples as ready for shipment and for shipments received, for reviewing needed tests for each sample, for entering in test results, and for the administrative screens needed in order to maintain and monitor the system as whole.

The Lab Sample Quality Management system then integrated with the existing WLF intranet which houses the Product Specification Editor, the Training Manager, as well as an Intranet Administrative Console.