Hudsonville Ice Cream
A modern scoop on supplier excellence
SNAPSHOT
Churning ice cream, juggling complexity
In Holland, Michigan, where tradition meets sweet innovation, Hudsonville Ice Cream has been handcrafting America’s favorite frozen treat for nearly 100 years. But behind the scenes, managing suppliers was more rocky road than smooth vanilla.
That’s when TraceGains came along—the cherry on top of Hudsonville’s quality and compliance operations. With gut checks and email chaos melted away, the team now enjoys a streamlined, digital platform that serves up supplier scorecards, centralized dashboards, and measurable performance—no sprinkles of confusion, just the sweet taste of control.
INDUSTRY
F&B
LOCATION
Holland, MI
FOUNDED
1926
SOLUTIONS
Supplier Management
Supplier Compliance
Horizon Scanning Global
“My background at other food companies involved messy Outlook folders. It got confusing when things were expiring or someone created another folder. With TraceGains, we now have a streamlined approach and a documented workflow process for supplier approval—whether it’s initiated by purchasing or R&D. Anyone can check status in real-time, and we have a very clear list of approved suppliers.“
CHALLENGE
Fragmented and manual tracking
Hudsonville’s quality and supply chain teams were doing their best with what they had: a maze of Microsoft Outlook folders, countless email threads, and institutional memory to track supplier performance. But as operations scaled, this fragmented approach wasn’t cutting it. From incomplete documentation to delays in corrective actions, the cracks were showing.
"Something that's been fantastic with supplier compliance is the capability to enter in CARs. We went from this haphazard email back-and-forth—cross-your-fingers-for-a-response system—to one that's fully automated and tracked. It's been fantastic once again for measuring performance over time."
SOLUTION
Reimagining compliance digitally
Hudsonville Ice Cream began its TraceGains journey with Supplier Management, aiming to rein in an approval process that had outgrown email threads and siloed folders. With multiple departments initiating supplier setups—R&D, purchasing, and FSQA—it became essential to streamline approvals and provide real-time visibility.
As processes became more transparent and collaborative, the team expanded into Supplier Compliance—replacing guesswork and inbox trails with structured, automated Corrective Action Requests (CARs).
They took it even further, using CARs to track fulfillment issues alongside food safety concerns—giving the company a 360-degree view of supplier performance. Dashboards built from COAs and workflows across teams gave Hudsonville new levels of visibility, alignment, and control.
“We use the workflows religiously as communication tools. We’ve noticed gaps in other platforms we’re using, and we’ve optimized TraceGains to bridge those gaps and share information across teams.”
RESULTS
Results that speak for themselves
Since implementing TraceGains, Hudsonville Ice Cream has experienced:
Full supplier visibility
with centralized dashboards and scorecards.
Automated corrective actions
Always current, audit-ready documents backed by a risk-based system.
Streamlined document management
and approval workflows across departments.
Data-driven decisions
that replaced assumptions with measurable performance.
Their secret recipe? Tradition, talent—and TraceGains.