Marel Food Processing software independently provides full slaughter control and traceability at Skövde Slakteri, Sweden.
Sweden's largest privately owned slaughterhouse, Skövde Slakteri, has installed Innova Food Processing Software to control their meat processing factory in Skövde, Sweden.
The company only works with Swedish meat and emphasizes local production close to the source. Innova Food Processing Software now plays a key role in the efficient traceability that Skövde Slakteri takes pride in.
Innova Food Processing Software is set up to work with the third party equipment, systems and solutions that were already in place at the company. The software can monitor and work with most third-party systems and is independent of Marel equipment. This was an important issue for Skövde, which sought to install a single system to oversee production and integrate with their existing ERP system.
Skövde Slakteri processes both beef and pork, deboning and packing meat products into consumer packages while also selling full carcasses and quarters to other deboning companies. With Innova, they have gained full overview and control of their operation from slaughtering to packing.
“The main benefit is that now we have everything in one system,” says Stefan Kylén, Production Manager. “This level of control is a prerequisite for the high quality that is our hallmark. Quality guides our actions in everything from animal husbandry issues and transport to health and follow-up checks in production. It’s also easier to label the product as the locally produced, ecologic beef that it is with this system than with the old one.
“We use Innova in every part of the factory. It controls and monitors the animal reception and registration, the production flow and the deboning, packing and dispatching processes,” says Johan Larsson, Skövde Slagteri IT Manager, who oversees the administration of the new Innova system. “It is a great advantage to have Innova running the entire operation. It creates a direct line between the slaughtered animal and the customer.”
Innova Slaughter Control is an integrated and flexible system that controls the slaughter process from the reception of live animals to classification. It allows processors to control and monitor key points in the slaughter process in real time while ensuring traceability and execution of quality control procedures.
“We mark the incoming animals with ID's and it follows them through the whole system so we can trace every item back,” says Kylén. “Since we implemented Innova on the kill floor, we have much better traceability.”
Innova provides a complete overview of the product’s journey through processing from reception to dispatch. “We have seen several beneficial changes in our workflow,” says Kylén. “The software has improved how we do the job and how we trace it.”
Traceability information is based on purchase orders and lots. All units that are registered in Innova can be traced one level back and one level forward. The traceability function relies on the purchase orders in the raw material intake and the lots in the actual production process.
“You can actually see which animal went into deboning, and what you are packing at any point in time,” Larsson explains. “That way you can always trace the meat back. You only need the label of the product. There you have all the information on the animal that the product comes from.”
All the traceability information on the product is collected through processing and available on the final product label. “The label designer in Innova is a very powerful tool. It is flexible and you can easily design the labels to fit the products you have,” says Larsson. “Everything that is stored in the database is usable on the label so all the information you want to use is at your disposal.”
Innova offers optimized workflows, cost-effective inventory control and efficient order management. The system manages purchase orders, production orders, inventory orders and sales orders.
“Innova not only provides full production control and traceability,” says Kylén. “It also helps improve the entire order processing, making it more streamlined and easy to manage. It makes the life of our salespeople easier because they see how much they have sold and the production leaders get accurate information on how much to produce each day.”
The order management system helps eliminate both under- and overproduction. “Having all the orders in Innova makes the packing process more accurate and efficient,” Larsson explains. “Once we have all the orders in Innova you have the order numbers, lines, amounts and types on hand and can easily see how much of each product needs to be produced to fulfill customer orders. You can pack directly to orders on each packing station, create reports on the performance and give to the operators.”
Production schedules, sales and transfer orders are created in the ERP system and then transferred to Innova to help control production. Innova also transfers production data from the factory to the ERP system.
“The integration between our Innova production system and Jeeves, which is our ERP, is basically that the old functions which were done in Jeeves are mimicked from the exported data from Innova,” says Larsson. “For people working with Jeeves in the office it all looks the same which is great but in production, it's a different story. Now we have greater control and a much better overview.”
The team from Innova worked closely with Skövde to set up and integrate the system with their existing software and procedures. “Working with the Innova team has been very good,” says Larsson.” They are helpful and they know the ins-and-outs of the system and the operation. It always feels as if you are talking to the right person when you need anything done.”
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