Country Maid’s Butter Braid® Pastries have earned an annual spot in the Coolest Thing Made in Iowa contest, finishing in the top four in 2025. That’s high praise considering all the things that are made in Iowa, where manufacturing is the state’s largest industry.
While recognition is nice, the folks at Country Maid won’t hesitate to tell you where their true success lies. Their famous hand-braided pastries have helped groups in 45 states fundraise over $380 million to support many worthy causes.
Along with cake rolls, cookie dough, and braided breads, Country Maid’s sweet treats are in high demand, which isn’t easy to meet on the factory floor, especially during the busy season.
Josh Reitz of Van Meter helped Country Maid identify opportunities to improve production visibility and efficiency.
With the time for increased production needs approaching, Country Maid had a major business decision to make. So it called on long-time automation partner, Van Meter, to see if it could help evaluate options and determine the right path forward.
Challenge:
Limited Production Visibility Hindered Decision-Making
“Country Maid is in a great position where their business is growing,” explained Josh Reitz, Van Meter Industrial Solutions Business Consultant, “but they have a situation where they need to understand whether they need to add more people to accommodate production demand.”
Come August, when kids go back to school and activities start up, it’s prime time for fundraising, which means Country Maid’s products will be flying out the door as fast as it can make them.
Country Maid has operated with a single shift for a long time, but its leadership was starting to wonder if a second shift was their only answer.
“That obviously starts to eat into profit margins,” said Reitz. “They need to understand if they could actually get more out of their first shift.”
Before adding labor or production capacity, manufacturers can benefit from identifying the constraints already limiting throughput. Poor material flow is one potential source of hidden production delays that can limit manufacturing throughput.
As Reitz dug in, one of the things he kept hearing was a lack of data accessibility and clarity among operators on the production floor.
Multiple stages of pastry dough processing and forming on automated bakery production equipment.
“While we had pretty good data, we didn't have that data in front of the people on the frontlines,” said Marc Banwart, Country Maid Director of Engineering and Technology. “A lot of the troubleshooting and data correlation was happening out of band, so we were looking at data that was somewhat historical.”
Old data wasn’t allowing operators to make quick, informed decisions on the production line.
“When it comes to manufacturing and trying to create a culture of change, it really starts with frontline employees,” said Reitz, “engaging them in the decision-making process.”
Reitz found that much of Country Maid’s production data was manually collected across different ununified systems, and he knew that as volume increased, the lack of real-time insight into downtime, labor utilization, and scrap would become a barrier to good decision making.
Solution:
Plex Production Monitoring Delivered Real-Time Operational Insight
In order to gain operational clarity, Van Meter’s industrial solutions team recommended Rockwell Automation’s Plex production monitoring software and teamed up with trusted system integrator, Interstates, to implement it.
“Plex is a manufacturing execution system,” explained Aaron DeBoer, Manufacturing Execution Systems Lead for Interstates. “It covers all kinds of functionality from creating raw ingredients to finished goods, and, specifically, one of the offerings is production monitoring.”
Plex production monitoring provides the ability to trace your production environment straight from your plant floor, so you can read real values on an easy-to-understand dashboard.
With Interstates being able to prep the software offsite, it was able to provide a quick turnaround for Country Maid. The new system was implemented and operators were trained on the software ahead of the busy season.
Real-time production monitoring gave operators immediate visibility into performance metrics and production data.
Giving operators immediate feedback on production line performance was important to Country Maid, and Reitz saw the benefit of understanding downtime, scrap, and variance in real dollar figures, not just quantities, which ended up being a crucial piece of the puzzle.
With real-time information at hand, Country Maid leadership was poised to make educated decisions.
“They can make those decisions around: do we need to run a second shift?” Reitz said. “Do we run overtime this weekend?”
Result:
Real-Time Visibility Increased Output by 30%
With a three year pay back, not only was Plex a good solution for Country Maid, but also an affordable one, especially when you consider the quick results.
“On our pastry line, we were able to see a 30 percent increase in output of our product,” Banwart said, “and that was able to be done through reduction in waste.”
The strong increase kept Country Maid from running a second shift, which allowed it to keep up with seasonal demand without the cost and challenge of hiring a second shift in West Bend, IA, where the population is under 800.
“It was a payback within a matter of months,” added Reitz. “When you're able to churn out a 30 percent improvement in capacity and pull back resources and labor on a second shift, it's astronomical what the return is on your investment . . . , and they're starting to see engagement from their employees.”
Country Maid’s operators are empowered to make decisions based on the metrics they’re seeing, and they have the transparency to see the results of their decisions right away.
Improved visibility and decision-making helped Country Maid increase output by 30% without adding a second shift.
In other words, the hardworking people who are making award-winning products have all the tools they need to succeed.
“It kind of builds a confidence in them that they can solve their own issues at times,” said Banwart.
And while there’s certainly value in solving a critical problem, there’s also intangible value in spending time with people who care about your success.
“We view them [Van Meter] as our partners,” Banwart gushed. “We've had a very long history with Van Meter throughout the years. They've helped us to find the right equipment, find the right tools, the right software to put in place because they really do understand our business.”
“I would definitely recommend Van Meter and Interstates. . . , ” Banwart continued. “They are very good at training our people on how to operate software or processes, even after the actual installation through integration. And then the support that's available from both of the companies is second to none.”
Not only did Plex production monitoring software help Country Maid thrive during its busiest season, but, according to Banwart, also positioned the pastry powerhouse for future success.
“The efficiencies gained from Plex allows us to be able to take on new projects with customers, offer different services to our customers that we couldn't do before, and also reduces the amount of time that it takes us to go to market with a product.”
Country Maid
Country Maid, Inc., a 100% employee-owned company, manufactures an extensive selection of premium bakery items and iconic brands that are available in both fundraising and retail markets, including the “famous” Butter Braid® Pastry. Country Maid, together with its national network of dealerships, has helped fundraising groups across the nation raise over $380 million for thousands of worthy causes. Employing over 90 workers from 30 northwest Iowa communities, Country Maid continues to grow and live out its mission of “Helping Others Help Each Other”. For more information on Country Maid, Inc., visit www.countrymaid.net.