Litehouse Foods assures performance through uncertain times

“Downtime is not tolerated,” says Ben Budge, Senior System Administrator at Litehouse. “The PLC [programmable logic controller], the recipes, the orders, shipping logistics, and the systems we use to analyze data to make the smart business decisions — it’s all got to be running smoothly 24x7x365.”

Litehouse used a third-party resource scheduling and load balancing solution that is common in the foods industry, but it wasn’t cutting it for Budge. “It does an okay job, simple analytics. But even in a highly aggressive mode it didn’t seem to optimize in a logical fashion. It just load-balanced resources,” says Budge. “We wanted a solution that would take the burden of judgement calls off our plate.”

With its rapidly growing environment, Litehouse wanted something smarter — a solution that could give answers to questions like:

“Our environment is always changing, always expanding as we either buy new companies or new plants,” says Budge. “We were constantly challenged with balancing infrastructure cost and performance. That’s what led us to look for a solution that we could automate. When you grow you can leverage automation to solve a lot of problems — effectively managing resources to assure performance is one of them.”

When the COVID pandemic hit, Litehouse, like the rest of the world, faced the unknown. Its various business channels saw dramatic ups and downs, and demands on the data center fluctuated even more than usual. Closed restaurants weren’t ordering bottles of dressing and takeout lunch spots weren’t serving salads with dressing in pouches. Demand also decreased when schools closed and other contracts shut down. But in-store purchases skyrocketed as the population flocked to grocery stores to stock up for lockdowns.

On top of fluctuations in demand, Litehouse employees had to transition to remote work. “As we all began working from home, we weren't sure what this was going to look like. What are we going to have to worry about? And it became pretty apparent, not a whole lot. That’s how Turbonomic has been a part of it,” says Budge. “It’s been a part of our COVID strategy — being ready for anything — from the start.”

Litehouse has been resilient in business and, thanks to Budge and his team, resilient in IT operations as well. Even during a pandemic, Litehouse has continued its tradition of giving back, supporting local food banks and other community initiatives.

For Budge and his team, their diligence in using automation to assure performance and increase productivity is paying off. “Turbonomic has been performing very well and has been an integral part of keeping our operations running during this pandemic. It’s nice to have the peace of mind, that we have a system that can keep our critical systems running optimally even under increased demand.”