Traceability: farm, packhouse, food manufacturing - Packhouse Traceabilty

Produce Traceability Initiative PTI made easy (PTI)

nospam@example.com (The Traceability Team) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:28:45 -0700

Implementation of Produce Traceability (PTI) Initiative made easy

The Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) is sponsored by Canadian Produce Marketing Association, Produce Marketing Association and United Fresh Produce Association, designed to help the fresh produce (fruit and vegetable) industry maximise the effectiveness of current traceability procedures, whilst developing a standardised industry approach to enhance the speed and efficiency of traceability systems for the future.

The Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) has a bold vision which outlines a course of action to achieve supply chain-wide adoption of electronic traceability of every case of produce by the year 2012.

Implementation of the Produce Traceability Initiative / PTI can be made easy using software tools such as ProducePak Farm & Packhouse management solutions.

Using ProducePak Farm Software, all farming records for PTI traceability are collected during the normal farming process via computer or PDA device. ProducePak Farm Management systems manage, plan, and monitor virtually all activities across the farm including budgeting, planning, materials requirements planning, labour requirements planning, cash flow planning, spray, irrigation, planting, harvesting, observations, and more. This traceability information is then shared with ProducePak Packhouse modules.

The ProducePak Packhouse modules provide comprehensive management of the packhouse processes, including quality control, stock and inventory control, packing, grading, sorting, storage (long or short term), sales orders (purchase orders), PTI Produce Traceability Initiative compatible labelling, PDA based barcode scanning (mobile) of pallets and stock, dispatch, sales mangement and analysis. The automatic integration of PTI processes into the ProducePak Packhouse management process makes PTI an easy implementation by providing automatic PTI (Produce Traceability Initiative) management and enforcement.

Printing of labels for PTI (Produce Traceability Initiative) is a very small fraction of the capabilities of ProducePak, however, another example of how ProducePak makes clients farms and packhouses easier.

Visit ProducePak Farm Management for more information.
Visit ProducePak Farm & Packhouse Management for more information.

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mySolutions brings Farm & Packhouse systems to South Africa PTI

nospam@example.com (The Traceability Team) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:19:00 -0700

mySolutions, a leading South African solutions integrator, and broad spectrum information technology provider has ehnaced their portfolio of solutions once again. mySolutions has become the exclusive South African partner for the suite of ProducePak Solutions.

This unique ERP system comprises five modules pertaining to the farming and pack house industry, namely: Farming Management System, Packhouse Management System, Food Manufacturing Management System, Quality Management System and Poultry Management System.

The concept for ProducePak originally developed from the need for an ERP system, which was conducive not only to the way that pack houses and farmers conduct their business operations, but also to enable them meet the stringent international standards and improve farming and pack house management in terms of business processes.

ProducePak removes the constant challenges faced by pack houses and farmers, daily scheduling and follow-ups, repetitive asset allocation etc, and allows for streamlined business operations.

The system allows for a creation of tasks, traceability of stock and inventory, management of budgets, packing processes, etc. The Business Intelligence Module is a tool designed for planning and taking strategic decisions. Among its various functions, it allocates costs and quantities to relevant specific tasks resulting in bottom-line savings. The modern-day farmer is now in a position to run his farm as a cost-efficient enterprise and compete with large international corporations.

ProducePak was originally developed in Australia for the local market and subsequently adapted for the European market from which it has grown into a global product. It has since expanded into USA, Canada, Kenya, Egypt, Sweden, Morocco, to name but a few countries, and is now also available in South Africa.

As a niche product, its use lies in areas where pack houses and farms are required to conform to standards and procedures of the highest level, but do not yet have the infrastructure to support some of the larger ERP systems. With thousands of pack houses and farms using the product worldwide, ProducePak has the unique ability to identify itself with local farmers and is quickly integrated into the daily planning and work processes needed to run an efficient farm and pack house enterprise.

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It can be integrated with popular accounting software. ProducePak offers a powerful support system, as much time is spent in consultation with the farmer or pack house owner to fully understand the business and personal requirements. This information is then applied to set up an environment to accommodate the specific needs and, in this way, provide a truly unique and custom-based solution to each individual farm or pack house.

ProducePak has the power to provide pack houses and farms with a complete overview, traceability and integration of workflows and processes resulting in a lean and economically efficient pack house and profit maximisation.

For more details please see:
mySolutions Home Page - South Africa - Packhouse/Farm Software
mySolutions Press Release

Case Study > Increase traceability and quality control qickly and easily

nospam@example.com (The Traceability Team) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:17:00 -0700

Business HillSide Gardens Ltd
Country Canada
Business Type Farming, Packer, Marketer

Business Profile: HillSide Gardens has grown from a small family operation to large producer, packer, and exporter of quality produce to multiple regions. HillSide boasts it own farming operations producing multiple fruit and vegetable varieties, packs internally produced produce, packs for multiple regional growers, and provides produce marketing services in Canada and the United States. HillSide deals with some long life produce which is stored in state of the art facilities for months, and distributed during the non production seasons. HillSide prides its operations on being innovative with business operations, and maintaining the highest possible standards for product quality.

Challenges: Implement higher traceability standards without increasing costs; to cater for increasing requirements from clients and national regulation. Manage long term storage of perishable product inventory, and implement QC.

Requirements: Traceability improvements for export, packhouse analysis and reporting, improve cost analysis of packing costs, manage multiple growers product through packing, storage, and distribution processes, implement QC

Solution: ProducePak Packhouse Management & Mobile PDA, Mobile Quality Control

"ProducePak has provided us with the seamless quality control & traceability our operation was looking for. Our customers are satisfied and confident with ProducePak traceability, and we are saving money using the excellent business analysis tools." Ron Gleason, CEO of HILL SIDE GARDENS, Canada

Main Benefits from ProducePak Packhouse :

Packhouse Traceability & QC: Implementing high levels of traceability & Quality Control throughout the entire packhouse operation has been made easy for HillSide with ProducePak’s management of produce from the moment it arrives to instant reporting on traceability after dispatch and sales. QC tests are defined for standard operations, as well as templates based on specific customer requirements. Staff performance versus QC can be analysed easily.

Cost Control & Reporting: Packing costs can now be accurately (and quickly) for produce packed based on not only grower (supplier) but also on different batches, varieties, and packing periods. Cost reporting and pack-out rates are rapidly reportable; this information makes determining purchase prices of produce more accurate and profitable as growers are paid on the merit their respective pack-out rates.

Inventory: HillSide inventory is now accurately managed for the extended life of the produce, with FIFO (First In-First Out) management being provided by ProducePak. This new facility gives reduced waste and shrinkage for the storage and dispatch operations.

"We have improved our inventory control because we now have real time data on what’s happening in the field with our PDAs. This helps to reduce spoilage and waste." Ron Gleason, CEO of HILL SIDE GARDENS, Canada

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Summary: HillSide has significantly improved traceability levels, reduced waste, increased accuracy of inventory, increased accuracy of raw produce purchases, made better sales decisions based on the cost of packing each specific type of traded unit (finished product).

For further information , please see Farm Software , Traceability Solutions , Quality Systems , Packhouse Software , Farm Traceability , Farm ERP , Packhouse Management Software , Farm To Fork

Packhouse Traceability in Emerging Regions / Developing Countries PTI

nospam@example.com (The Traceability Team) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:14:00 -0700

This document has been provided specifically to answer questions asked by companies in Developing Regions prior to implementation of a Traceability Solution in the Packhouse.

Why ProducePak?
ProducePak has a long history of implementing projects in regions across both developed and developing regions. In particular, developing regions include Kenya, South Africa, Guatemala, and Egypt. New projects in 2010 include Ghana, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria.

ProducePak consultants have great experience with projects in developing regions making difficult projects successful ones.

The ProducePak solution helps to enforce international standards very quickly where the users of the system have little or no experience with computers or implementing food production, safety, and best practices in horticulture businesses.

In many cases, the ProducePak solution has been very successful during implementation where the users being trained have no experience at all with computers. A core feature of ProducePak is that the system “guides” the user through the best practice processes for safe and efficient food production.

ProducePak expert consultants provide ongoing support to clients in the form of email, phone, remote, and onsite training services; and also upgrades to the software every three months which will include new features, reports, and industry facilities to ensure international standards are always supported by ProducePak.

The on-site training process provides an expert ProducePak consultant that will manage the entire installation, configuration, deployment, and training for the project. This ensures a high degree of success for the project, and provides the best possible results and speed for the project.

Case Studies
To review case studies from developing regions using ProducePak, use this link http://www.producepak.com/pdf2/producepak-case-study-egypt.pdf
To review case studies from developed regions using ProducePak, click on this link http://www.producepak.com/pdf2/producepak-case-study.pdf

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Benefits from ProducePak Packhouse
The following is a list of benefits from ProducePak Packhouse systems.

General Benefits Include:
• improved profit in the packing process
• improve staff efficiency by easily and quickly implementing best practices
• reduce duplication & redundancy
• decrease management response time
• improve reporting, analysis, and business monitoring
• instant cost reporting, live at any time!
• streamline & automatically manage processes
• enforce operational standards
• create full traceability of all produce handling in all business areas
• quality improvements
• easy audits and traceability management
• increased staff performance via higher levels of accountability and bonus/incentive schemes
• share and collect information from customers online, reducing administration costs
• Increased accuracy of produce handling reduces waste
• Batch based packing process allows easy traceability of all product from either end of the supply chain
• Paperwork and identification labels can be automatically generated at the point of produce deliver, saving time and administration managing this process
• Increase Packhouse efficiency by automatically maintaining HACCP, EurepGAP, GlobalGAP, ISO x, BCA, and other standards during the packing process

Other Benefits Include:
• Increased accuracy of produce handling reduces waste
• Batch based packing process allows easy traceability of all product from either end of the supply chain
• Paperwork and identification labels can be automatically generated at the point of produce deliver, saving time and administration managing this process
• Increase Packhouse efficiency by automatically maintaining HACCP, EurepGAP, GlobalGAP, ISO x, BCA, and other standards during the packing process
• Reduced waste of produce inventory
• Increase staff accountability and monitoring
• Bonuses and incentive schemes motivate staff performance
• Easy traceability management
• Reduction in administration errors via improved handling processes of produce
• Increase customer satisfaction via orders being delivered correctly, and on time
• Enhance communication between marketing and Packhouse management
• Reduce administration time spent making reports for packing requirements
• Effortless traceability of all product palletised
• Easy labelling of product, including origin, branding, packer details and more….
• Reduce waste by accurately tracking stock and finished product
• Traceability accuracy is enforced; providing a higher level of traceability and easy fetching of traceability information
• Labelling and identification can be tailored to meet Packhouse (or customer) requirements
• Reduce pallet handling errors by using bar-code identification systems
• Rapidly know each clients purchasing trends to determine the best market for produce
• Reduce paperwork and manual data entry during consignment, and increase accuracy
• Increase customer satisfaction via orders being delivered correctly, and on time
• Reduce inventory waste/shrinkage by increasing control and accountability over inventory consumption
• Easily ensure there is always the correct quantity of inventory on hand to perform required packing processes; by analysing and receiving alerts from inventory balances
• Enhanced inventory control allows the business to better manage the quantity of materials on hand, resulting in improved cash flow
• Increase staff accountability and monitoring of inventory consumption
• The Mobile Packhouse software controls staff tasks such as Dispatch by instructing staff on where to find stock to fill orders. Smart features like this are also used in the Stock Assignment processes
• Staff spend less time writing information onto forms, labels, and other documentation, and more time doing their critical tasks
• ProducePak Mobile Stock Control allows your staff to perform data entry from anywhere on your site, making recording of stock, pallets, quality assurance, and pallet dispatch convenient and fast from anywhere at your packing facility.
• By using Mobile Stock Control staff are encouraged to record stock and pallet information more accurately. The Mobile Stock Control module removes the necessity of staff requiring a PC to enter data and increases the speed and ease which information can be recorded. Mobile Barcoding is a specialised mobile solutions combining wireless networking, PDA, and barcode scanning technologies.
• Easily enforce consistent Quality Control tests for each product/traded unit/grade between all Quality Control officers
• Enforce customer Quality Control tests
• Increase staff performance by rapid identification of common mistakes or quality breaches
• Save on packing costs by identifying incorrectly packaged/processed product immediately and take corrective action
• Adjust packing charges by monitoring the quality performance of growers/suppliers
• Justify raw produce purchase price adjustments to growers/suppliers by providing growers/suppliers with evidence of the quality of produce delivered to the Packhouse
• All quality control activities become more accountable by providing employees instant feedback on quality issues
• Advanced reporting is available which can be used to benchmark multiple departments, teams, or multiple companies
• For large organisations, Quality Control testing can be easily standardised over multiple companies or departments from one convenient location; enforcing consistent quality control processes throughout the organisation
• Centralise QC administration, making Quality Control over multiple organisations and departments easy

Features of Packhouse ERP
Whilst there are hundreds of features in the Packhouse solution, the following summarises the main features. Full details of the systems features can be downloaded from these links:
• Packhouse System Specifications http://www.producepak.com/pdf2/ProducePakPACKHOUSE.pdf
• Packhouse System Demonstration http://www.producepak.com/pdf2/PackhouseSummaryProducePakSolutions.zip
• Packhouse Mobile Solution Option http://www.producepak.com/pdf2/ProducePakPackhousePDA.pdf

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Features Summary
• Full Traceability Management
• Incoming produce management
• Full inventory/stock management
• Comprehensive pallet management with PDA and barcode enabled identification
• Packhouse labour management
• Batch based packing process management
• Packaging materials management
• Operational cost monitoring and reporting
• Employee monitoring and analysis
• Purchase Order & Sales Order management
• Sales, Consignment, and dispatch management
• “Grower Returns” management for co-operatives
• Extensive reporting & analysis facilities
• Produce maturity and ripening management
• Web enabled Customer Care Portal
• Integration with financial and general ledger packages
• Integration with payroll packages
• Integration with ProducePak Farm ERP
• Scan stock into batches
• record bin numbers and picker numbers for incoming stock
• move stock
• transfer stock off-site, and receive stock from off-site
• move pallets
• assign stock to batches
• perform pre-pack Quality Assurance and Quality Control
• perform post-pack Quality Assurance on cartons/packed bins
• dispatch finished pallets to customers
• use theoretically unlimited number of PDA’s
• stock-take pallets that need to be sent to customers
• view pallets on Dispatch Dockets
• dispatch management
• stock management
• use a PDA to manage stock stored at remote sites (eg: distribution warehouses in other countries)
• use PDA to count packed items for staff performance analysis (or use the Payroll Assistant module to pay packers based on the number of cartons they pack)
• Create Purchase Orders to acquire inventory
• Receive Inventory functions
• Perform multi-site stock takes, and or multi-depot stock takes
• Authorise the use of inventory from various storage depots
• Unlimited storage depots, at unlimited sites
• Batch & Lot number traceability
• Batch & Lot number recall processes
• Easy ‘pending delivery’ analysis

Case Study > Packhouse computerisation brings great savings, improvements in accuracy and easy enforcement of EU quality & traceability

nospam@example.com (The Traceability Team) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:26:00 -0700

Business Zein El Din International
Country Egypt
Business Type Farming, Packing

Business Profile: Zein El Din is a long established producer, packer, and exporter of fruit and vegetables to Europe and Middle East regions. Zein El Din is a family established enterprise which produces a range of fruit and vegetable with a production schedule lasting almost all year round.

Challenges: Meet new traceability requirements for export to EU region. Enforce production staff to maintain higher levels of traceability for chemical applications to produce during spray tasks. Modernise packhouse operations which were paper based, and suffered from inaccuracies for inventory control, First In First Out (FIFO) management of produce, dispatch response time and accuracy was unacceptable, and difficulties knowing what produce is available for sale were experienced.

Requirements: Computerise packhouse operations for higher traceability and labour analysis, enforce traceability on farms, increase accuracy and handling of produce in packhouse to enhance quality and profit.

Solution Implemented:ProducePak Packhouse , ProducePak Farm ERP

Packhouse computerisation brings great savings, improvements in accuracy and easy enforcement of EU quality & traceability

Main Benefits:

Packhouse Computerisation: Automation of the packhouse has proved drastic increases in traceability, accountability, and reporting. Management now has access to hundreds of pack-house reports which are used to gauge produce quality, staff performance, and packhouse costs. Labour use in the packhouse is now more efficient and information recording and reporting is significantly more accurate for the packhouse. Savings due to FIFO management of inventory (both raw and processed) has been achieved. Maintaining standards for exporting fruit and vegetables to EU and UK regions has been easily implemented and supported.

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Management of Farming Activities: Farming activities now have a very high level of traceability for all chemical (and other inputs) applied to each area of land under production.

Summary: The solution has enforced EU traceability standards, savings from reduced waste of raw produce due to mishandling, greatly improved accuracy of packhouse and farming reporting, improved farm traceability for chemical applications, new reporting and analysis tools for management, reduced costs preparing reports manually.

For further information , please see www.FarmSoft.com , www.PackhouseSoftware.org , www.farm-software.net , www.FarmPlanning.org , www.farmsystems.org , www.ProducePak.com , www.ANPTechnology.com , www.mytoowoomba.com

Packhouse Software PTI > A packhouse manager responds to before and after questions after implementing packhouse traceability

nospam@example.com (The Traceability Team) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:10:00 -0700

The following responses were given by a Farm when asked about each area of the business and how their recently implemented software solution has helped them to implement better management systems.

Before: Packing costs for each batch were often unknown. We pack for our own farm and other farmers, so we need to know how much it was costing for each farmer.
After: Using ProducePak Packhouse we can now see the packing costs of each batch, including labour and materials seperately. We now use this information to determine the price we will pay the farmer for their goods if the produce was not from one of our own farms.

Before: Packaging materials were unaccountable and often wasted materials were not properly accounted for.
After: Packaging material is now automatically consumed by ProducePak every time we create pallet contents; this keeps an automatic balance of materials. Wasted materials are now entered via stock take, so we know if there are any deviations.

Before: Traceability through the packhouse was not “100%” accurate. Sometimes we would mix produce from different origins (or farmers) and this would not be reflected on our paper based traceability.
After: ProducePak allows us to use PDA’s to scan barcodes (issued by ProducePak when we the produce arrives) to add it to the batch.

Before: On occasion, produce would be added to a batch, and we didn’t know which batch it was added to.
After: We can mix as many origins of produce and still maintain absolute 100% traceability throughout the entire process.

Before: Digging up traceability records could often take a few hours just for one batch, and was often not very accurate.
After: We also put a batch number on the finished product, if the consumer ever has a problem with the quality or traceability of the product, we can now produce a Batch Traceability Report instantly, which shows us full details of the origin and who packed it and when.

Before: Management of raw produce was often prone to error, and occasionally unnecessary waste where produce was not packed in the correct order.
After: ProducePak allows us to easily see and report on all raw produce on hand, when we add it to a batch ProducePak suggests what produce should be packed first (maintaining FIFO); this feature can be overridden by management where necessary. We can now see if we have enough produce to pack our orders, and what the potential excess or shortage will be. We now experience virtually NO raw produce waste due to staff error.

Before: Many activities in the packhouse would be written on paper or spreadsheets by packhouse staff, then later entered by administration staff. For example the dispatch process would be written down three times.
After: Information is entered only once now, directly into ProducePak. Most of this information was entered multiple times.
The dispatch process is streamlined by allowing staff to use the PDA to scan the pallets that are being dispatched, and scanning them one final time at the physical point of truck loading. This PDA process replaces several paper documents, and now means our administration and marketing staff have real time access to information.

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Before: Labeling of incoming raw produce, pallets , and finished product was often inaccurate and makeshift.
We were using a separate program to print barcodes, a spreadsheet for pallet labels, and hand written labels for incoming raw produce. This resulted in many errors by staff, and the problem that the labels are not automatic and integrated into a traceability database.
After: ProducePak now prints our labels automatically at every step throughout the packhouse. The labels all have barcodes and human readable information. There are no more mistakes on labels in our packhouse, and everything is automatically generated such as pallet numbers, and stock arrival numbers.

Before: Pallet management was suffering from inaccuracies due to our hectic packhouse environment often resulting in dispatch staff consigning pallets on a non FIFO basis.
After: During the dispatch process, ProducePak will suggest to staff which pallets should be added to which order. If the pallet does not match the orders specifications for quality or quantity, the staff member is alerted during the consignment process when they scan the pallet label. We now have absolutely zero errors during consignment, and every day we can see the exact status of orders, allowing us to know if we can send staff home or not.

Before: Quality control was often missed or not performed properly, and packhouse management would only find out about this at a later stage. We usually perform a QC on each outgoing pallet, on at least 12 random cartons form each batch, and on stock arrival (raw produce incoming).
After: We can now perform QC using the PDA on the stock arrival process. We use a PC on a QC station in the packhouse to test finished product, and the PDA to perform QC on pallet dispatch.
The results are now quantifiable and we can see performance of individual packers and know what they need retraining for. All QC is now monitored easily by management and we can see if anything was missed.

HillsideGardens awarded $50,000 for traceability solution

nospam@example.com (The Traceability Team) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:24:00 -0700
HillSide Gardens, an innovative farm and marketer has been awarded a $50,000 prize by the Canadian Government (Ministers Award) for excellence in Agri-Innovation. The dynamic management team of HillSide Gardens has implemented huge traceability changes, business management improvements, and other initiatives over the past years; making HillSide a leading producer in their field.
HillSide Gardens BackgroundThe management team including Ron Gleason (CEO) and Dan Vanderkooi (Production Manager) have spearheaded a major overhaul of traceability and information systems. Changes to the operational environment include replacing old manual traceability solutions and partially automated traceability solutions with new fully automated high availability management systems. Whilst maintaining a higher level of traceability, the HillSide business has also achieved greater levels of profitability and productivity.

"ProducePak has provided us with the seamless quality control & traceability our operation was looking for. Our customers are satisfied and confident with ProducePak traceability, and we are saving money using the excellent business analysis tools." Ron Gleason, CEO of HILL SIDE GARDENS, Canada

Implementing a business management solution that combines both traceability software and business management software has helped HillSide Gardens to implement new KPI’s in the business, resulting in better analysis of business operations and staff accountability.

HillSide Gardens pride their business operations on high levels of staff productivity, high traceability, and high quality for consumer products. The HillSide team has created an environment in which innovation and creativity is encouraged, with the future always bringing a better quality product to their clients.

The Award
Presented by his honorable Premier McGuinty, showing that Ontario's agri-food industry continues to strengthen the province's economy. This was the theme of the Premier's Summit on Agri-Food, where innovators were recognized with the province's top awards for agri-food innovation excellence:

Hillside Gardens Limited in Simcoe County receives the Minister'sAward of $50,000 for their innovation in implementing an electronic "gate-to-plate" traceability program.

The recipients are being recognized under the Premier's Award for
Agri-Food Innovation Excellence, a $2.5 million, five-year program (now in its third year) established to recognize innovators who contribute to the success of Ontario's agri-food sector.

The innovations of 55 regional winners, who will receive $5,000 each, will be announced at regional award ceremonies this spring.

Quotes

"In these challenging economic times, we need everyone working together
so we can emerge from this recession even stronger. Our farmers produce the
food we eat; their fields are home to wind turbines providing clean, renewable
energy to Ontario families; and they're harvesting crops we're still finding
new uses for in the auto industry. Agriculture has always been one of the
cornerstones of Ontario's strong economy. These awards are a celebration of
the talent and innovation we have growing here."

- Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty
(http://www.premier.gov.on.ca/home/default.asp?Lang=EN)

"Ontario's agri-food sector continues to lead through innovation. With
these awards, we are supporting the creative ideas growing on farms and rural
communities across this province. Together, we are building opportunities that will make our agri-food industry and economy stronger."

- Leona Dombrowsky, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.
(http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/about/about.html)

QUICK FACTS
- Ontario's agri-food sector is one of the province's leading
industries, contributing more than $33 billion to the economy every
year.

- In its first three years, the Premier's Award for Agri-Food
Innovation Excellence has attracted more than 550 applications
highlighting on-farm innovations.

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LEARN MORE
See videos (http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/mm/) of previous award
winning innovations and discover the variety of previous award-winning on-farm
innovations at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs website.
Learn more about other government programs supporting innovation
(http://www.mri.gov.on.ca/english/default.asp) in Ontario by visiting the
Ministry of Research and Innovation website.

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Minister's Award Recipient ($50,000)
Hillside Gardens Limited - Bradford, Simcoe County
>>

Ron Gleason is helping to strengthen the gate-to-plate connection. He
redesigned an existing software program for use as a farm traceability
program. It's capable of tracing all field activities from harvest, to
packing, to shipping dates and destinations. Lot IDs are assigned in each step
in the process, and the end product is dated with a bar code sticker. The
wireless, computerized system will only allow product that has been assigned
to a load to be picked and scanned. This improves many aspects of the
business, from rotation and quality issues to recall efficiency and inventory
control. The system provides "real time" inventory and work is underway to
expand its capabilities.

About the Awards Program
Awards - The five-year, $2.5-million Premier's Award for Agri-Food
Innovation Excellence is now in its third year. There can be up to 55 regional
award winners chosen annually, with a cash prize of $5,000 each. From these
winners, a Minister's Award of up to $50,000 and a Premier's Award of up to
$100,000 are selected.

Who is eligible? - A farmer, primary producer, groups of farmers,
combination of agri-food businesses, or an agri-food related organization are
all eligible for recognition under this initiative. A farmer must be one of
the applicants of any group. This program is not intended for the research
community as there are other government recognition programs available to this
sector. Applicant/nominees must reside in Ontario and be a Canadian citizen or
permanent resident of Canada. Ontario Public Service staff and immediate
family are not eligible to apply for this program.

Types of eligible innovations - Examples of innovations for this program
include (but are not limited to) improved farm practices, responding to
consumer demands; environmental stewardship; health and safety on the farm;
energy innovations; education and marketing of agriculture to society, and
local food.

For further information: Sherry Persaud, Minister's Office, (416)
326-6439; Brent Ross, Communications Branch, (416) 326-9342

Source: http://ogov.newswire.ca/ontario/GONE/2009/04/06/c7539.html?lmatch=&lang=_e.html
http://www.ProducePak.com

Case Study > Increased food safety, reduced farm costs, quantifiable & consistent quality control

nospam@example.com (The Traceability Team) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:22:00 -0700
Business Farm Frites
Country Europe, Middle East, Africa
Business Type Farm, Food Processing, Packing,

Business Profile: Established in 1971, Farm Frites is a leading producer, researcher, packer, and processor of various fruit and vegetable products exported world wide. With offices in over 13 countries, and farming operations in multiple continents, Farm Frites continues to develop new products, both fresh and processed, for markets in Europe, Middle East, and USA. The Farm Frites workforce comprises several thousand employees; many are experts in their respective fields.

Challenges: Product labelling wasn’t always convenient to include batch traceability number, batch traceability throughout packhouse could be inaccurate at times. Management of fresh produce inventory was paper based and suffered from inaccuracies which on occasion caused losses due to product spoilage or waste. Management of PHI (Post Harvest Interval)/withholding periods during farming operations was time consuming. Instructing staff on their farming tasks and the planing of initial tasks for farming staff was time consuming and inaccurate on occasion. Monitoring and following up the status of farm tasks was time consuming and inaccurate. Quality Control testing was inconsistent and the data produced was not quantifiable or easily analysed. Farming inventory suffered from shrinkage and recording of cost centres where inventory used was non existent.

Requirements: increase accountability of farming inventory and consumption, implement labour planning and control & monitoring system, implement automated QC, implement product identification system, improve packhouse inventory management and traceability of all produce and packing materials.

Increased food safety, reduced farm costs,
quantifiable & consistent
quality control

Solution Implemented:
ProducePak Packhouse, Packhouse Mobile PDA with bar-code scanning, Quality Control, ProducePak Farm ERP
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Main Benefits:

Product Identification : ProducePak provides the client with an array of labelling options which include batch numbers for all packed product.

Packhouse Inventory & Traceability: the solution reduces inventory waste, and enforces strict traceability via PC and PDA’s throughout the entire packing and processing operation using bar-code scanning and assignment of all produce directly to batch numbers.

Quality Control: Quality Control is now performed anywhere in the facilities using mobile PDA devices to scan product and enter quality control test results. The results are now useful for management to perform staff quality performance analysis, and product packing analysis for quality.

Post Harvest Interval Management: PHI and withholding periods on chemicals used during spray tasks now have automatic alerts for any potential breach of PHI and will disallow staff from harvesting produce that falls within a PHI withholding period.

Farm Task Planning, Instructing, Monitoring: managers can now plan and schedule tasks from ProducePak; quickly, and efficiently. Continual monitoring of farm tasks can be performed rapidly and quickly, highlighting any potential issues or incomplete or deviating tasks. Farm employees are instructed using tasks created in ProducePak, and labour consumption is assigned to each cost centre, increasing production cost reporting accuracy.

Farm Inventory Accountability, Waste, Accuracy: Farm inventory is now “check out” and “checked in” when being consumed from store rooms, this provides high accountability of all inventory consumed, and consumption is assigned to a cost centre and only authorised for “check out” if the employee has a corresponding farm task.

Summary: Savings in inventory shrinkage, management time, savings of product loss due to farm tasks not being performed (or performed at the correct time), extremely accurate and traceable product handling and inventory, quantifiable and useful Quality Control reporting, accurate and consistent Quality Control, and more…

For further information , please see www.FarmSoft.com , www.PackhouseSoftware.org , www.farm-software.net , www.FarmPlanning.org , www.farmsystems.org , www.ProducePak.com , www.ANPTechnology.com , www.mytoowoomba.com

What is Traceability?

nospam@example.com (The Traceability Team) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:08:00 -0700
What is Traceability?
Traceability is the ability to follow and document the origin and history of a food or feed product. Traceability systems are record keeping systems used for tracking the flow of product through the production process and supply chain.

Why Traceability?
Traceability helps companies track multiple products, monitor food safety and food quality issues, and control distribution of unsafe or poor quality products. An effective traceability program can minimize the potential for negative news, reduce product recalls, and control liability issues.

Traceability and Control Measures
Traceability systems must be paired with a real-time delivery system or other inventory control procedures, and be based on a real-time basis in order for the system to work effectively. The producer needs to link the tracking system to an effective safety control system (AgBiotech Bulletin 2003).
In 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) issued Section 306 of Title 3: “establishment and maintenance of records” ( FDA 2004). “All producers, distributors, importers, transporters and packers of food are required to establish and maintain records, sufficient to identify the immediate previous sources and immediate subsequent recipients of the food” (Peterson and Green 2006).

Almost all grains and oilseeds in the USA are traceable from production to consumption. In the cattle and beef sectors, producers are working on implementing a voluntary National Animal Identification System to track and identify animals from farm to retailers. The National Pork Producers Council announced plans to implement a mandatory swine identification program with implementation by Dec. 2007. Traceability systems are also in place for the produce industry. In addition, Wal-Mart is requiring its 100 largest suppliers to use radio frequency identification tags (RFID) to trace and track all products sold to their stores.

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In the E.U., traceability is covered by the General Food Law, which entered into force Jan. 1, 2005. This law addresses withdrawal of dangerous food products, and operator responsibilities and requirements applicable to imports and exports. It applies to all food, animal feed, food-producing animals and all types of food chain operators from the farming sector to processing, transport, storage, distribution and retail to the consumer, as well as public water systems such as those provided by towns or other municipalities. This law requires that information on the name and address of the producer, and the nature of the products and dates of transaction must be systematically registered within each operator’s traceability system. These records must be kept on file for a period of five years and on request must be immediately made available to the competent authorities (Petersen and Green 2006).
Traceability is not mandatory in Japan for seafood products, but there are record keeping requirements for seafood processors. Traceability is mandatory for beef (Peterson and Green 2006). Similarly, in Canada although traceability is not required for seafood products, record keeping requirements are in place to address wholesomeness, labeling, packaging, health and safety issues (Petersen and Green 2006).

Tracking Methods
A standardized method for tracking products has not been established. Traceability methods include paper trails, linear bar codes (EAN.UCC System), radio frequency identification tags (RFID), two dimensional symbologies (2-D Bar Codes), and real time locating systems (Petersen and Green 2006).
AgBiotech Bulletin. 2003. Food traceability from the farm to the fork. Vol. 11., Issue 10.
FDA Booklet. 2004. What you need to know about establishment and maintenance of records. http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/
Peterson, A., D. Green. 2006. Seafood Traceability: A practical guide for the U.S. industry. North Carolina Sea Grant. UNC-SG-06-04. 28 pp.

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