Case Study: Columbus Vegetable Oils achieves streamlined inventory accuracy and resilient, secure wireless with Extreme Networks

Columbus Vegetable Oils - Customer Case Study

Columbus Vegetable Oils, a Des Plaines, Illinois manufacturer handling over one million pounds in shipments per day, needed to automate its inventory and order-fulfillment process when moving into a new 310,000 sq. ft. facility. Facing chronic accuracy problems from pen-and-paper lot tracking, the company required a highly reliable, secure, and easy-to-manage wireless solution to support hand-held scanners and mobile devices. After evaluating options, Columbus Vegetable Oils selected Extreme Networks’ Cooperative Control wireless LAN (including ExtremeAPs and ExtremeCloud IQ) for its resiliency, security features, and vendor support.

Extreme Networks deployed a distributed Cooperative Control architecture with ExtremeAPs, ExtremeCloud IQ management and ExtremeSwitching/PoE, eliminating the need for costly central controllers and adding dynamic mesh failover for higher availability. The solution provided stronger wireless security (802.11i/WPA2, 802.1X, IDS, AP-based firewall), simplified plug-and-play provisioning and monitoring, and enabled reliable hand-held scanning across the warehouse (19 scanners deployed). By removing controller costs that can represent 50–75% of a solution, increasing network resiliency, and automating inventory capture, Extreme Networks helped Columbus Vegetable Oils move away from error-prone paper processes and stabilize mission-critical operations.

Columbus Vegetable Oils

David Hodapp

IT Director