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Digitising for greater transparency

09 August 2021

Food Processing spoke to Ian Scott-Mance, technology manager for Mettler-Toledo ProdX, to discuss the growing need for traceability throughout the food manufacturing process. 

Q: Why is traceability throughout the food production process becoming such an important issue? And what role does the digital transformation have to play in this?

The driver came from retailers and the increasing demands of end customers to see if the foods they buy are sourced from environmentally friendly sustainable farming. After the first positive pilots from global retail chains, government and legislative agencies saw the value in using digital supply chain data to improve the safety of the foods we eat. In the short term there are three focus use cases – The first is to pinpoint sources of food contamination; the second is to pinpoint all retail outlets where contaminated food is on the shelves; and the third is to combat food fraud. With data saved digitally this can be done in seconds from a single workstation.

Digitalising the supply chain gives complete transparency – it allows manufacturers to better identify affected products (thereby reducing potential recall costs) and allows them to prove the provenance and quality of their ingredients and products as well.

Q: What problems might a lack of traceability during food production typically pose a food producer? 

We are already starting to see the effect on food manufacturers, with a growing number of retailers and countries demanding full supply chain traceability on certain products. Producers who do not adopt these practices will start to see business opportunities reduce. As new regulations emerge it will soon become a legal or compliance requirement. 

Q: How easy is it to create the necessary data collection infrastructure in a typical food production plant to implement an effective traceability solution?

That is not an easy question to answer! Most of the data required is already captured in some form or another to comply with current food safety regulations. That said, data collection today is mostly still done manually with paper and pen and documents stored in files. We will see an increasing number of devices and sensors coming to market which will connect directly to cloud applications to publish data automatically. Most production plants do not fully utilise the full connectivity functionalities of installed equipment. In some isolated cases, however, it may require some form of device update or might even require a replacement. The whole infrastructure will be based on solid and established industry standards of coding, identification and communication which are available and in common use today.

Q: Is it enough to just gather data from product inspection systems? What other areas of the food factory could/should data be digitally collected from? 

Collection of data from product inspection systems is not currently the primary focus of this digital transformation. It’s a huge undertaking and needs to be addressed in bite sized portions to enable production facilities of all sizes to digitise food safety processes. Cost will be a key factor and there is an active requirement from the FDA to make this ‘no or low’ cost. Eventually data will be required from every step in the logistic supply chain and food production facility to document every handover and transformation event. This will touch everything and will realise a tangible financial value to all stakeholders as well as the end customer who, through increased visibility, will have a much greater trust in the food they eat.


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