Traceability and food safety: 7 optimization opportunities

Moving raw materials between production areas and different processes needs to happen fast. A highly automated production line reduces processing time with multiple benefits to the value chain. Here, the use of intelligent technology can greatly improve efficiency and safety in material handling and throughout the rest of the system.

A setup that ensures no contact between raw materials and the end product, as well as minimum manual handling, will lower the risk of contamination as well as help extend shelf life, maintain nutritional properties, and support food safety. You can raise efficiency further with a quality control system that monitors performance and responds quickly to any deviation.

There is an increase in demand for flexibility in regard to larger product mixes, smaller series, shorter production runs, and last-minute orders. Often a customer will make a change to their order at short notice, and the raw material’s quality may have changed from when they originally placed their order.

Flexible production lines and planning tools can help you to both predict what to produce and ensure reliable production. You will be able to respond to fluctuations in supplier or customer conditions and raw material flows, depending on the product being made, as well as any demand or schedule changes, all in real time.

By improving agility, you will also increase your factory uptime and yield by minimizing changeovers and enabling flexible scheduling. If you integrate analyzing software into your processing, you can investigate data in real time and make immediate, informed decisions to refine your production systems.

Data can reveal a great number of ‘pains’ in your factory and help you identify opportunities for improvement. With food processing software, you will be able to gather, store, and manage the data generated across the full line and beyond. This will even give you invaluable information such as yield, throughput, capacity, and labor efficiency. Data can also highlight recurring problems with issues like equipment functionality to show which specific area needs attention, which helps you to schedule maintenance proactively.

With the right production data, you will find it easier to identify ways to reduce downtime and increase throughput, which can in turn help you develop new products and processes, thereby opening up new revenue streams.

Is your production mainly focused on just one premium product, while the remaining parts have to be sold at low prices? When you know how to find the balance between incoming material and customer orders, your operations will have much more added value and your process will become far more sustainable.

From primary processing to deboning systems and portioners, every system can be designed to salvage every last profitable piece of meat, poultry, or fish in the production process. This will help you gain extra grams per product and add value to the offcuts.

The key is also to be able to act on any surpluses or shortfalls and utilize a setup that allows you to change processing programs from one product to another. In instances like this, an automated process is much more flexible than a manual one.