Customer case study
Super Store Industries
and Zap Data Hub
Customer case study
Super Store Industries
and Zap Data Hub
Blending Data - Boosting Performance:
How Super Store Industries optimized operations with Dynamics AX and Zap Data Hub
About Super Store Industries
Super Store Industries (SSI) is a leading contract manufacturer and distributor in the food and beverage sector, specializing in dairy and fruit juice products.
Operating a large-scale manufacturing facility spanning a few city blocks, SSI produces over 90,000 cases per 12-hour shift across nine production lines.
As a key supplier to leading beverage and dairy brands, SSI is committed to efficiency, quality, and compliance in its manufacturing processes.
Industry
Food & Beverage, Manufacture, Distribution
Website
Solution
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Background
SSI recognized the need to modernize its manufacturing operations and improve data-driven decision-making. The company’s production teams relied heavily on manual reporting processes, making it difficult to gain real-time insights into performance, downtime tracking, and compliance monitoring.
As part of a broader strategic initiative, David Armentrout, Senior IT Manager for Manufacturing Systems, was tasked with implementing a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) to enhance production visibility. However, traditional MES solutions proved expensive - often costing up to $1 million - prompting SSI to explore a more agile and cost-effective approach.
I felt like I could see data just falling onto the floor - there was so much information being captured but not being used effectively.
David Armentrout,
Sr IT Manager, Manufacturing Systems
At the same time, the finance team successfully implemented Zap Data Hub to streamline financial reporting. Seeing its impact, the operations team looked to expand Zap’s capabilities into manufacturing analytics, ensuring a unified data strategy across finance, production, and quality assurance.
By using Zap Data Hub’s analytics and automation capabilities, SSI was able to integrate manufacturing data seamlessly, delivering real-time insights without requiring a costly standalone MES.
Challenges faced
SSI found several key challenges that needed to be addressed to improve operational efficiency and ensure accurate, real-time data reporting:
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Manual Reporting Inefficiencies: Production teams spent up to two hours per day compiling shift reports manually, leading to delays and inconsistencies in decision-making.
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Lack of On-Demand Production Visibility: Without a centralized system to track downtime and production counts, it was difficult to pinpoint operational inefficiencies and optimize performance.
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Compliance & Quality Control: SSI needed a more precise system to monitor and verify product weight consistency, particularly in ice cream production, to meet strict customer contracts.
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Expanding Data Strategy: With Zap Data Hub already proving successful in finance, SSI wanted to extend its use into manufacturing analytics, ensuring a single source of truth across departments.
Solution outcomes
To overcome these challenges, David led a project to expand the use of Zap Data Hub from finance into manufacturing operations. By integrating production data into Zap, SSI was able to:
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Automate shift reporting, reducing manual effort while improving accuracy.
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Track key performance indicators (KPIs), such as production output, downtime reasons, and efficiency metrics.
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Enhance compliance monitoring, particularly for weight consistency in ice cream production.
Within the first month, we saved more than $50,000 through better inventory management, Zap paid for itself almost immediately.
David Armentrout,
Sr IT Manager, Manufacturing Systems
Through a seamless integration, Zap was configured to ingest data from production lines, MES systems, and financial sources, tracking essential factors such as downtime events, product counts, and quality control data.
One of the most impactful enhancements was the introduction of weight tracking dashboards for ice cream production. By capturing and visualizing scale data within Zap, the quality assurance team could pro-actively monitor product consistency, ensuring compliance with contractual weight requirements. This feature helped reduce audit exceptions and strengthen relationships with key customers.
David explained the impact of integrating MES data with Zap - “What Zap does for us is empower decision-makers to act on the data being captured on the plant floor. Without it, we’d be flying blind.”
Sample reports
Figure 1: Hourly Uptime and Downtime
Figure 2: Juice Production Daily Uptime/Downtime
Outcomes & competitive advantage
By implementing Zap Data Hub, SSI realized significant cost savings, efficiency improvements, and data standardization across the organization.
Operational Efficiency Gains
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Shift reports that previously took two hours per day are now fully automated, saving valuable time and improving accuracy.
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Dashboards provide instant access to production insights, enabling faster decision-making.
Significant Cost Savings
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Proactive inventory management reduced operational costs by over $50,000 within the first month, effectively covering the cost of the product.
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The ability to identify inefficiencies in production scheduling and material usage prevents unnecessary waste and excess stockpiling.
Improved Compliance & Audit Readiness
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Weight tracking dashboards significantly reduced audit exceptions, ensuring contract compliance with key customers.
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The traceability of production data improved, allowing SSI to respond quickly to quality control inquiries.
Centralized & Standardized Reporting
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SSI now runs with a unified data strategy, consolidating over 70+ data pipelines across finance, operations, and quality assurance.
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Standardized reporting ensures all teams work from a single source of truth, eliminating data discrepancies.
Zap Data Hub has revolutionized how we use our manufacturing data - turning raw numbers into actionable insights that drive efficiency, reduce waste, and improve compliance.
David Armentrout,
Sr IT Manager, Manufacturing Systems
Seamless integration & scalable growth
The success of this transformation was not just about technology, it was about the strong partnership between SSI and Zap.
Seamless Data Integration
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Zap was configured to pull data from multiple sources, including Dynamics AX and MES systems, creating a comprehensive analytics platform.
Custom Dashboards & Automated Reporting
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SSI leveraged Zap’s flexibility to tailor reports for manufacturing operations, ensuring clear and actionable insights.
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Automated daily shift reports are delivered via email, cutting manual data pulls and providing instant access to key performance metrics.
Scalability & Future Growth
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SSI now has a scalable analytics platform capable of expanding into supply chain forecasting and traceability improvements.
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Future initiatives include predictive maintenance analytics and further automation of quality control processes.
Conclusion
SSI’s adoption of Zap Data Hub has transformed manufacturing operations, unlocking efficiency, cost savings, and data-driven decision-making.
What started as a financial reporting tool has evolved into a company-wide analytics platform, integrating operations, finance, and quality assurance into a single, standardized system. While adoption is still growing among production teams, the long-term benefits are clear, SSI is now better equipped to optimize operations, reduce waste, and drive strategic growth.
SSI’s journey demonstrates how modern analytics solutions can revolutionize manufacturing efficiency and profitability, setting a new standard for data-driven operations in the food and beverage industry.
Partnership highlights
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Automating shift reports saved 30+ hours per month in manual reporting time.
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Inventory management improvements paid for Zap within one month.
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Over 70+ data pipelines consolidated, ensuring accurate and standardized reporting.
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Process control dashboards improved compliance and reduced audit exceptions.
Case study
QualiTru and Sage Data & Analytics
“Thanks to Sage Data & Analytics, I’m now relieved of a lot of my ongoing reporting requirements to the board as they can simply go and view it themselves in the system real-time as and when they need to”
Industry:
Manufacturing / Quality Control
Website:
Requirements:
Automated reports, easy-to-access data, detailed analysis for forecasting
Data Sources:
Sage 100
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Background
Established in 1983, QualiTru is a family-owned business located outside St. Paul, Minnesota, which manufactures sampling devices for the food industry which are then sold to businesses across 30 countries.
The product allows the customer to put a hypodermic needle through a silicon membrane and take a sample from a tank or pipeline; this is then sent to a lab and tested for contamination, quality control or whatever the customer’s requirements may be.
Challenges
Even before the pandemic struck, CEO Calvin Guyer was working both offsite and onsite, and he’d found the company’s data source, Sage 100, was easier to manipulate onsite than off. Therefore, when he wanted to get information out of it whilst working from home, he would typically download data into a spreadsheet and then use pivot tables and other utilities. Not only was this time consuming, when the pandemic hit which forced him offsite even more frequently, the process became more and more inefficient.
“It's very difficult to VPN into Sage and download the data and update the spreadsheets so I was looking for an online data warehouse that would solve this problem, do it automatically for me, and then allow a connection to a platform.”
The company deployed Power BI and started looking for online data warehousing products, favouring the idea of automation of connections and flexibility. The need to update manually had to go, particularly when accessed through a slow VPN, and the case for a cloud solution had become obvious.
It was at this stage that Guyer stumbled across Sage Data & Analytics.
Solutions
Sage Data & Analytics appealed to him immediately because it instantly got rid of manual elements and had analytical capabilities without the need for extra coding and development. QualiTru is a family business (although Guyer is not part of the family) so the ability to update the dashboard and provide the family and other directors access to vital data about their business in real-time was key.
Another benefit was the accuracy of the data, said Guyer. "Data in Sage gets a little dirty; there’s full stops, commas, mis-spelled names and other messy things." However, thanks to the connector built into Sage Data & Analytics which enabled the data to be consistent, due to it being entered once rather than multiple times, the scope for human error was all but eliminated.
The business has seen a significant improvement as a result of implementing the new system. “We were never really tracking this detail of data before – when we made sales, who we sold to, when they would be likely to buy again and what markets we were in,” said Guyer. In fact that was only the start; the company wasn’t looking at what it had sold to particular clients the previous year either, but it now has a better defined budget cycle based on facts.
But this is only the start; QualiTru is able to apply analytics and forecasting to individual products and is looking at new markets and goal-setting for 2022. It’s going to be based on solid data and facts about the company’s performance – and this is thanks to deploying Sage Data & Analytics.
Benefits
-
Out-of-the-box data on cash conversion cycle, days of inventory and a great many other business elements for better insight.
-
Access to close-to-real-time reporting for family, directors and other stakeholders.
-
Ability to forecast more confidently and make substantiated plans for business development.
“Thanks to Sage Data & Analytics, I’m now relieved of a lot of my ongoing reporting requirements to the board as they can simply go and view it themselves in the system real-time as and when they need to”
Industry:
Manufacturing / Quality Control
Website:
Requirements:
Automated reports, easy-to-access data, detailed analysis for forecasting
Data Sources:
Sage 100
Want a detailed copy of this case study?
Background
Established in 1983, QualiTru is a family-owned business located outside St. Paul, Minnesota, which manufactures sampling devices for the food industry which are then sold to businesses across 30 countries.
The product allows the customer to put a hypodermic needle through a silicon membrane and take a sample from a tank or pipeline; this is then sent to a lab and tested for contamination, quality control or whatever the customer’s requirements may be.
Challenges
Even before the pandemic struck, CEO Calvin Guyer was working both offsite and onsite, and he’d found the company’s data source, Sage 100, was easier to manipulate onsite than off. Therefore, when he wanted to get information out of it whilst working from home, he would typically download data into a spreadsheet and then use pivot tables and other utilities. Not only was this time consuming, when the pandemic hit which forced him offsite even more frequently, the process became more and more inefficient.
“It's very difficult to VPN into Sage and download the data and update the spreadsheets so I was looking for an online data warehouse that would solve this problem, do it automatically for me, and then allow a connection to a platform.” The company deployed Power BI and started looking for online data warehousing products, favouring the idea of automation of connections and flexibility. The need to update manually had to go, particularly when accessed through a slow VPN, and the case for a cloud solution had become obvious.
It was at this stage that Guyer stumbled across Sage Data & Analytics.
Solutions
Sage Data & Analytics appealed to him immediately because it instantly got rid of manual elements and had analytical capabilities without the need for extra coding and development. QualiTru is a family business (although Guyer is not part of the family) so the ability to update the dashboard and provide the family and other directors access to vital data about their business in real-time was key.
Another benefit was the accuracy of the data, said Guyer. "Data in Sage gets a little dirty; there’s full stops, commas, mis-spelled names and other messy things." However, thanks to the connector built into Sage Data & Analytics which enabled the data to be consistent, due to it being entered once rather than multiple times, the scope for human error was all but eliminated.
The business has seen a significant improvement as a result of implementing the new system. “We were never really tracking this detail of data before – when we made sales, who we sold to, when they would be likely to buy again and what markets we were in,” said Guyer. In fact that was only the start; the company wasn’t looking at what it had sold to particular clients the previous year either, but it now has a better defined budget cycle based on facts.
But this is only the start; QualiTru is able to apply analytics and forecasting to individual products and is looking at new markets and goal-setting for 2022. It’s going to be based on solid data and facts about the company’s performance – and this is thanks to deploying Sage Data & Analytics.
Benefits
-
Out-of-the-box data on cash conversion cycle, days of inventory and a great many other business elements for better insight.
-
Access to close-to-real-time reporting for family, directors and other stakeholders.
-
Ability to forecast more confidently and make substantiated plans for business development.