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Case Study: Cowgirl Creamery
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
- Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
- Networks & Connectivity - Cellular
Applicable Industries
- Food & Beverage
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Quality Assurance
- Warehouse & Inventory Management
Use Cases
- Fleet Management
- Predictive Maintenance
- Remote Asset Management
- Supply Chain Visibility
- Building Energy Management
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- System Integration
- Training
The Challenge
Cheese is a comparatively difficult product to produce, store, and ship. Each variety requires different aging times, temperature, and humidity. The same goes for shipping, and it is imperative that cheese is protected from high temperatures and humidity due the effect on delicate flavors and the potential for bacterial growth. The Cowgirl Creamery team was using analog temperature and manually recording temperatures on clipboards three times a day in their delivery trucks and twice daily in their aging rooms, cold storage rooms, and milk tanks. Cunnie knew there had to be a better way to record all this data, and she began looking at chart recorders to record temperature and alert the team when temps fell out of spec. Coincidentally, Cunnie was also searching for a fleet management solution to improve the operations of their distribution network. She hoped to find a solution that combined temperature monitoring with fleet management. That’s when she found Samsara.
About The Customer
Located in scenic Point Reyes, Cowgirl Creamery is the leading artisanal cheesemaker in Northern California. Known for its soft cheeses made with seasonal and local ingredients, Cowgirl has witnessed exponential growth, fueled by winning globally-recognized awards and consistent recognition by food critics. At the center is Maureen Cunnie. From production to tasting and pairings, Cunnie knows cheese. She began as a chef, mastering her craft working alongside famed chef and author Annie Summer, before taking over cheesemaking at Cowgirl Creamery. After producing some of Cowgirl’s most popular cheeses, Cunnie was interested in the operations of the rapidly-expanding creamery. She moved to a new role as Operations Manager, taking over management of the production, distribution, and retail processes. Cunnie summarizes her role as “getting cheese exactly where it needs to be in a safe and timely manner.” With their devoted following, Cowgirl Creamery has an ever-expanding production operation plus a fleet of vehicles delivering cheese throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. The creamery’s distribution network runs daily deliveries to four Cowgirl-owned destinations, plus over three hundred customer sites.
The Solution
The team installed Samsara EM-series wireless environmental sensors for temperature and humidity throughout their operations. With the EM12’s temperature probe, the quality assurance team now keeps an eye on the temperature of milk in the milk tanks, different spots in each aging and storage room, and each delivery truck. The EM12 sensors used in the creamery production and storage areas wirelessly sync with Samsara GW22 industrial gateways. GW22s are plug-and-play cellular gateways designed to wirelessly stream real-time sensor data from a variety of data inputs. The GW22s came to Cowgirl Creamery pre-provisioned with cellular connectivity, automatically connecting to Samsara's cloud-hosted platform without requiring IT involvement. They also wirelessly synced with and began streaming the temperature data from the EM12 sensors. In their delivery vehicles, Cunnie's team installed Samsara’s VG33 vehicle gateways and EM12 sensors. Just like the industrial gateways, the VG33s were ready to go out-of-the-box, the team just plugged them into the vehicle diagnostic ports. In addition to streaming the live data from the sensors, the VG33 gateways automatically stream real-time vehicle location, acceleration, and vehicle diagnostic data to the Samsara. Now Cunnie opens the Samsara Dashboard and has visibility of her entire operation. She has configured alerts, so she receives instant notifications via SMS when the temperature of a truck or room goes above threshold. She opens the Samsara App or the Samsara Dashboard and sees all the temperature and humidity history for each location. This comes in handy, especially on the weekends.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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