Case Study: Consolidated Biscuit Company (CBC) controls net contents and cuts costly give‑away with Hertzler Systems Inc.

How one company made their balance sheet smell as good as the cookies they bake

Consolidated Biscuit Company (CBC), a 850,000 sq ft bakery with 1,200 employees and 13 production lines producing ~100 million cookies and crackers a day, faced costly product “give-aways” from overfilling packages to avoid minimum allowable weight violations. Existing SPC checks were infrequent and poorly located, causing slow response to out-of-spec conditions and expensive holds or repackaging. To address this, CBC engaged Hertzler Systems Inc and evaluated their GainSeeker SPC software and data-collection solution.

Hertzler Systems Inc implemented GainSeeker with portable stainless-steel SPC carts (scales, barcode sign-in, wireless PCs), real-time control charts, alerts to email/PDA, and integration with CBC’s AS/400 for daily lot reports that calculate give-away. The system enabled immediate root-cause detection (e.g., a bad extruder bearing), improved operator compliance and document control, and delivered measurable savings—the GainSeeker purchase and setup paid for itself in well under a year while substantially reducing product give-away.

Consolidated Biscuit Company (CBC)

Deb Keeler

Quality Manager