Ingredient Traceability and Inventory Management

Transcription

1 Food Connex Success Story John F. Martin & Sons Ingredient Traceability and Inventory Watch the video: 25 Seconds to Traceability

2 Introducing John F Martin & Sons Beginning in John F. Martin, founder of John F. Martin and Sons, Inc. was a struggling farmer seeking to pay his debts. To do this he began raising produce and poultry for resale at a market stand in Philadelphia. After 21 years of travel, he decided to open a butcher shop and market stand locally and then in 1961 established John F. Martin and Sons to sell fine meat products throughout Pennsylvania. Although, still surrounded by gorgeous farmland, the company has undergone expansions to the original Stevens, PA facility growing the plant to over 83,000 square feet with a state-of-the-art processing and packaging facility as well as a solar array. In addition, a brand new 190,000 square foot facility has opened in Womelsdorf, PA to accommodate the growing bacon line production needs. Today, the third generation of John F. Martin and Sons, Inc. continues to follow on John F. Martin s original commitment to providing only the finest meat and cheese products. ~ from JohnFMartinMeats.com

3 Automating Product Traceability The Goals As part of an ongoing drive to improve the safety, quality and profitability of production Vice President of Plant Operations Bernell Martin laid out the following goals for the implementation of the Food Connex Bill of Material Traceability System. Ingredient Traceability: Provide one-up / one-down traceability for all product ingredients including packaging contacts the food. Formulation Control: Enforce proper formulation. Checking to ensure the proper ingredients are being added in the proper amounts. Quality Assurance: Prompt users for quality control questions and record answers for review. Inventory : Automatically deplete ingredients used and receive into stock finished goods and any by-products. Paperwork Reduction: Consolidate reporting and reduce the number of hand-written worksheets.

4 Automating Product Traceability The Methods In order to meet the goals outlined the Food Connex Bill of Material system was implemented to cover all aspects of production from Purchase Order generation for the ingredients being ordered to the final invoicing of finished goods. Single Capture of Receiving Data: To reduce the amount of paperwork and manual record keeping a single point of data capture was established for incoming product. This eliminated the need for the information to be re-recorded during production. Barcoded Traceability Tags: Information captured during the receive, as well as ingredient history is maintained using food safe traceability tags. These tags accompany the product through each processing step and allow quick and error free capture of lot information. Touchscreen Production Stations: Wash down ready touch screen workstations were placed at key points on the production floor to allow scanning of lot tag information, entry of quantities used, and printing of new lot tags. Consolidated On-Demand Worksheets: The hand-written production worksheets were replaced with an on-demand report generation system. This allows for worksheets to be generated for any transaction at any time. RF Scanning of Case Labels with Embedded Lots: During the order fulfillment process product is scanned using an RF Handheld device. This captures the product and lot information while shipping the product.

5 Automating Product Traceability The Results John F. Martin & Sons has been recognized for their superior commitment to quality and safety and have achieved an SQF 3000 certification, they have brought a new production plant online with the traceability system, and have maintained approval for their organic and all natural product lines. Recall Readiness: Since implementing the traceability system John F. Martin & Sons has participated in several mock-recalls. During each the recall information needed was available immediately through on-demand reporting. SQF Certification: An SQF 3000 certification was achieved and maintained. The traceability system provided a portion of the record keeping and safety policy enforcements needed to achieve this honor. Paperless Recordkeeping: Paper record keeping has been dramatically reduced. On demand generation of production and receiving reports has allowed many reports to be stored electronically, and those reports that are required in hard copy are now computer generated to be consistently legible as compared to hand-written copy. Self-maintained Training: New employees have been hired and trained entirely by existing staff. This ease of use has allowed production to move forward at speed as the company continues to expand. Streamlined Workflow: Workflows that had varied in different divisions are now streamlined and uniform allowing easier crosstraining and employee movement.

6 Food Connex For Your Business While our corporate mission statement has not changed over the last 20 years, the world around us has. Business is more competitive, technology is more complicated, and those in the food processing and distribution businesses have to find ways to do more with less and drive profit to the bottom line ~ President, Paul Hernandez-Cuebas Thoughts From Other Customers of Realistically we ve saved 8 hours a day in labor. For the people processing entering variable weight items is much faster, entering standard weight items is a little slower so overall we re saving $40 to $45 thousand a year in fully loaded labor. But time savings aren t the real value, it s the time reallocation. Processors are entering information directly into the system so we no longer need the three managers to spend four hours a day chasing paperwork. This has allowed our top-level people to refocus on their top-level responsibilities. That s the real value, getting our problem-solvers back so they can concentrate on inventory management, purchasing, quality control and equipment maintenance rather than scrambling just to get product out the door. What s the dollar value in having our top-level people focused on their top level jobs? I can t put a number on it except to say it s high. ~Steve Polcsan of Indian Ridge Provisions We could not have continued growing without automating management of our inventory. When I joined Hometown Provisions five years ago I was employee number ten, now we re up to twenty-seven employees. ~ Kevin Adams of Hometown Provisions