Even small amounts of expensive materials like vanilla can have a significant impact on raw material costs. French producer of "patisserie" products Le Ster decided to invest in an improved formulation system to get maximum material yield.

Greifensee, Zurich -- (SBWire) -- 03/29/2012 --Le Ster is a key player in the industrial "patisserie" market in France. Specializing in products made from yellow dough, such as madeleine cakes and quatre quarts (pound cakes), the Group represents an overall annual sales of 170 million US dollar employing 420 people. The company’s products have a strong presence in the area of catering, particularly in service stations, as well as in the traditional major retail sector. This high-performance logistics system allows Le Ster to deliver their products with a one day turn-around!

Better transparency for improved traceability
Quality and innovation are two important values that equally guide the management team on a daily basis. A perfect illustration of this is their recent purchase of the production recipe management software FormWeigh.Net. Jean-Pierre Jehan, director of the Le Ster site, explains, "I was looking for a reliable system, which would provide us with better transparency in terms of our raw materials consumption, ensuring optimum traceability and capable of adapting to the IT system we currently have in place".

Optimized handling of expensive raw material Le Ster has three weighing stations installed with FormWeigh.Net formulation software. Each station includes an ID30 industrial PC terminal with the corresponding weighing platform and all three are connected to a master station. FormWeigh.Net can be configured to meet individual customer needs and supports further integration of new functions. Le Ster for example developed a specific “batch browsing" capability to the standard software package. "Since its introduction, the FormWeigh.Net system has helped onsiderably to optimize our consumption of certain expensive raw materials, such as vanilla essence”, states Isabelle Touillier, the site's quality manager. "The quality audit process performed by ourselves or by our clients has also seen much improvement. We are following the recipes with more accuracy and can now ensure computerized traceability. The fast training of all operators and the user-friendliness of the software has also been an important factor in making our choice.

Further improvement changes to comeSatisfied with its recipe management system, Le Ster is now in the process of evaluating connecting FormWeigh.Net to the ERP software system or even replace existing volumetric filling methods for handling large quantities such as flour or oils with more accurate weighing processes. Quality and innovation will always be the order of the day.

Key customer benefits of FormWeigh.Net
- Right mixture reliably documented
- Graphical support to avoid incorrect mixtures
- Prevention of material waste
- Acquisition and verification of batch information
- Clear, concise represetation of the weighing process
- Maximum process reliability
- Supports traceability
- Seamless ERP integration
- Fast ROI