Track and trace labelling – the future challenge

With consumer safety as the prime driver for introducing comprehensive traceability systems throughout the entire food production and distribution chain, there is a growing need to provide totally integrated labelling management systems that ensure confidence at every stage of this process.

Europe took a responsible lead in this vital area of consumer health by introducing Regulation EU 178/2002 through the European Food Safety Authority. This stipulated the need for comprehensive and accurate labelling, with a system in place to have documented up-to-date information immediately to hand, both upstream and downstream in the supply chain.

Benefits to your business

PRISYMID – a company with over 20 years of global operating experience under the increasingly strict regulations of the food and drugs industries – has highlighted six main roles for such systems:

•To provide information to assist in process control and management, for example, in stock control, material usage, quality control and in meeting regulatory demands.
•To help when problems may arise, such as processing issues or product recalls – minimising the size of such recalls.
•To provide hard evidence about products in cases of consumer concerns and to support claims for your products.
•To help reduce insurance premiums through proof of effective quality management.
•To boost overall process efficiency and product quality.
•To ensure that safety requirements are exceeded for your customers and to meet
current EC and US legal requirements.

Meeting the challenge

Traceability systems are joined-up record keeping systems, which ideally should fit easily into the current working practices of the business, including integrating smoothly into existing MRP and ERP systems. Much may already be in place – possibly through manual paper-based systems – but the complexity of the number of ingredients, the need to identify individual batches, to handle bulk ingredients and the speed to access real-time information more often demands the move or upgrade to IT-enabled systems.

Barcodes and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are proven and acceptable labelling and traceability technologies that allow for the globalisation of any business’s activities. Data collection equipment – for example, label printers, barcode scanners and readers – also add other operating efficiencies.

Compatibility between the software for barcode label printing or RFID tag coding and the hardware for recording and reading the information is therefore vital. Suppliers, such as PRISYMID, that have successful track-record in other critical industries, have obvious advantages because of the experience they can apply in providing solutions, which can also be customised to meet any specific customer requirements.

Confidence in a ‘turnkey’ solution

PRISYMID can provide a total solution to the food and drink industry in order to meet most companies’ traceability objectives. Not only can customised labels be designed and printed ‘on demand’, but barcode and RFID identification methods are also easily originated, encoded, verified and implemented throughout the logistics chain.

PRISYM FoodTrace software can be operated from a wide range of Wi-Fi or narrow band RF data capture devices, including hand-held PDAs, fork-truck mounted terminals, barcode scanners and images and desktop PC workstations. It will also operate on any mobile device running Windows CE or Pocket PC.

The successful project management of such turnkey software/hardware operations cannot be left to chance. Therefore, seeking good, solid advice will be the first step on the road to installing effective traceability systems, which will undoubtedly narrow down the choice of potential supplier. The cost involved may be less than you think, but the benefits all-round could have very positive effects on your business and on your competitiveness.

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For further information, please call Tel: +44 (0)118 936 4400 or email info@prisymid.com. Alternatively, visit www.prisymid.com.