Making traceability a reality

Retailers are pushing for traceability as a means of improving their supply chain management, while regulators such as the EU are behind it for reasons of public safety. Food manufacturers are therefore reluctantly forced to go with the flow, often at huge expense.

While there is some truth here, these are of course gross over-simplifications. EU legislation has been influenced by the obvious advantages that exist for the European industry of swift, clinically executed product recalls, while food manufacturers can themselves reap enormous supply chain benefits from improved traceability. And, given the damage to reputations and brand names that can occur, there is a point where the interests of public safety and those of the large retailers meet.

But what of the companies that serve the food industry by implementing the processing and packing steps that are also the building blocks of traceability?

Designing for integration

Birmingham based Ishida Europe Ltd, a strongly R&D oriented supplier of food packaging machinery, has been building traceability into its product development for over 10 years. FS asked Paul Griffin, the company’s marketing director, how this has influenced the company’s activities.

“There are two levels on which you can plan for traceability. At the level of the machine itself, whether it’s a multi-head weigher, a traysealer or a checkweigher, it’s important to consider what kind of information it might have to supply or to take on board. To what extent will it always be a mere data provider, or will it sometimes need to be a controlling, decision-making part of the line? The key thing here is to keep it flexible. We take an ‘open systems’ approach. Our equipment is compatible with most common interfaces, barcode systems and so on, and where there is a human interface we have been keen to offer a Windows XP platform.

“The second level comes when you are asked to provide a solution to a specific traceability challenge. You need to know how best these capabilities of different machines can be exploited and blended, with the appropriate interfaces and software, to improve efficiency, avoid duplication and assure the integrity of the traceability data.”

Traceability and the packing process: a snapshot

Rich Rotkirch of Ishida demonstrated some of Paul’s points using a weigh-price-labeller, a standard piece of kit that takes a wrapped or sealed tray of product, weighs it and labels it. It prints pricing information on the label and attaches any necessary barcode.

A typical application would find a weigh-price-labeller accepting trays of slices of rump steak from a portioning machine, and passing the finished trays to a flexible case-packing system (FPS), which is placing them into crates.

“In this case, the weigh-price-labeller can function most effectively as the control point of a sub-system which includes both itself and the flexible packing system,” explains Rotkirch.

Information about the carcass, where the animal was born, bred, slaughtered and processed, is picked up by the weigh-price-labeller. This information may arrive across a local area network from a centralised data storage system, perhaps linked to an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Alternatively, it may have come via a barcode, originally placed on the carcase itself or onto temporary packaging. In this case it will be scanned in using an in-line or hand-held scanner upstream of the portioning machine.

The weigh-price-labeller accurately weighs and labels each pack. It also passes on, via a traceability code, the vital information concerning origin.

“Currently, only beef has to actually be accompanied by this level of traceability information,” says Rotkirch. “If it were pork loin slices, say, all that would be necessary would be the batch number from which it came. However, that would be enough to trace the animal back, using the centrally held information.”

Meanwhile, the packing system has been set a crate-packing pattern (e.g. four layers of four packs each). Each crate is tared off, then weighed again on completion of each layer, and finally on completion of all layers. These layer weighings ensure that no packs are missed out, while the end-weighing confirms the crate is full. If it is not, it is rejected.

“Once the crate is recognised by the system as satisfactorily filled, the weigh-price-labeller retrieves and totals the accurate weights of all the pieces in the crate,” continues Rotkirch. “It sends this information forward to the crate labeller or RFID tagging system. It also sends the information back to the ERP system, where it may be used to determine how a given carcase or cut has performed in relation to the yield of meat it was expected to deliver.”

Getting the label right

To ensure that traceability is maintained, it is essential that the information on the label is correct and that (for machine readability) barcodes are correctly oriented. The weigh-price-labeller, which can label either top, bottom or both, can have an integrated special label inspection system which checks data and orientation. “The consequences of a wrong or unreadable barcode could be hours of wasted time, not just during distribution, but in the supermarket itself,” says Rotkirch.

Maintaining processing-packing continuity

“You could call us packing systems partners,” says Paul Griffin. “The solutions we provide include everything from multi-head weighers to tray sealers and casepacking systems. We integrate everything from metal detectors to smart labelling equipment.” He adds “However, for complete traceability, you have to integrate back into the food processing system, which is why we have worked with companies like Marel.”

Marel hf, headquartered in Iceland, is a major player in processing machinery for meat, poultry and fish. Magnús Ólason runs Marel’s UK subsidiary. “Full traceability is an aim we share with Ishida, and we can implement this from either end, either providing everything needed to integrate with what is downstream, or organising the whole system so that it works with our proprietary systems.

“The weigh-price-labeller case you have been looking at is a very good example: we would most likely be providing the portioning machine which in this situation is the traceability link between the upstream activities and the weigh price labeller.”

The two companies have become adept at integrating each other’s machinery and collaborating on the traceability aspects. While both work with a variety of partners, both find that the link is useful and attractive to food manufacturers.

“We find it a distinct advantage that we can deal with one packing equipment manufacturer who has a very wide range and knows all the ins and outs of integrating it,” says Ólason. “Similarly, I know that Ishida finds it of great benefit to have the processing side well-covered, and to deal with a company that has strong links back up the chain, to slaughterhouse equipment, for example.”

Part of a broader information picture

Traceability is often seen as an aspect of quality management. As such, it takes its place beside procurement, inventory and warehousing, production, sales and distribution, with the data relevant to all these activities needing to be integrated into an overall ERP system. Here, Ishida has formed a partnership with CSB-System, a company leading the way in industry-specific ERP and with a particular strength in the food industry.

Erwin Kooke of CSB-System explains why this link has important benefits for food manufacturers. “To maintain a competitive edge these days, one cannot have information islands or stand-alone solutions in the production system. Most processing or packing equipment can be integrated into such a system, but there are economies of time and cost in integrating machines from the same manufacturer.” Kooke continued: “We chose Ishida to work with because they have such a wide range of equipment. They cover all the major routes to retail-ready products in terms of weighing, filling, sealing, labelling, checking and casepacking.

“When we are implementing Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), we know that they will provide ‘intelligent’ machinery with standardised interfaces but often a choice of integrational possibilities. Their knowledge and experience means that in any given line or part line we can debate with them and with the customer’s production and IT people as to where the best place is to put in the overall data control and the link to the main ERP or other system.”

Useful data from processing and packaging

An interesting picture emerges when one looks at some of the data available from packing and processing lines, which could be of use in tracking the origins of problems or in helping companies to assess suppliers.

As Erwin Kooke of CSB-System says: “We are very interested in any external data output that processing or packaging machinery can provide. There is a great deal of information being generated which could be used right now or in the future to improve traceability or general quality control and process monitoring.”

Revealing X-rays

For example, the increased use of X-ray machines for quality control can alert line operators to metallic contamination or broken or disfigured product. However, it is also a rich source of information on the bone content of meat or fish products. “Combined with existing batch source information, this can provide a record of deboning effectiveness, or help to determine more efficient carcase-cutting approaches,” says Ishida’s Rich Rotkirch. “With animal bone often amounting to well in excess of 10 percent of total bodyweight, this is not a minor consideration.”

Metal detection and seal testing

Even with simple ‘yes/no’ tests such as metal detection or seal testing, whose immediate function is to accept or reject packs, there is the potential to accumulate data over time. This could be used to assess batches or suppliers (whether products or packaging materials). It could also help to track down, or even predict, problems on the packing line.

Traceability of packing materials

While EC Regulation 178/2002 covers traceability of food, EC 1935/2004 covers the need to be able to trace any materials coming into contact with it “at all stages in order to facilitate control, the recall of defective products, consumer information and the attribution of responsibility.” The minimum requirement is that the food manufacturer should be able to identify the source of the materials, while the packaging manufacturer should be able to say where any particular batch of material has gone. Kooke believes that most food manufacturers are probably keeping good records “although the information is often not immediately accessible on a single, company-wide system.”

Modified atmosphere gases

Gases used in modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) were classified as additives in the EU’s directive 95/2/EC. As Gary Tufnell, Traysealer Development Manager at Ishida, points out: “This means that they also come under the food traceability regulation, which covers not just food-producing animals and their feed, but any ‘substance intended to be or expected to be incorporated into a food or feed, through all stages of production, processing and distribution’.”

Tufnell’s team recently launched a new, advanced traysealer that continuously monitors the composition of MAP gases. “This replaces a time-consuming manual tray-sampling procedure,” he says, “and can quite easily be recorded on a label or on the film itself, or simply passed to a central data system.”

Looking to the future

“When a concept like traceability gets established,” says Ishida’s Griffin, “it tends to keep on growing. This is being driven by some very powerful factors, including retailers and legislation on both sides of the Atlantic. Equally important, as the technology needed gets better and cheaper, the industry will demand it more, simply because it can.

“Currently you see traceability at its most well-developed in the area of beef. We’re a long way from being able to track every piece of chicken in a stir-fry right back to the egg it came from, and it may never go that far.

“To all intents and purposes, the amount of information that can be stored by companies is unlimited. The speed with which actionable data can be retrieved is what counts, in an industry where a returned pallet can cost a manufacturer UK£25,000 and a product recall UK£250,000.

“The more immediately interesting question is how much data will need to accompany the product. Clearly there is a limit to what you can put on a conventional label that can be read and understood by the consumer. Linear barcodes typically store about 20 characters. 2D codes are not in widespread use in Europe, but can manage several thousand characters, like sending a small word-processor file along with the product. There seems to be a view that RFID tags are unlikely ever to be a viable proposition at individual pack level. However, you can’t rule out anything, including a future where consumers might use their PCs or hand-helds to access further pack information.”