Barcode scanning and label-printing technology track and identify jobs, people and materials.

Consumer fear forced food traceability to the forefront, making it a hot topic around dinner tables nationwide. Contamination problems and bioterrorism threats continue to plague the industry, prompting wider adoption of systems that enable thorough tracking. Astute businesses realize better systems must be implemented to calm consumers’ fears, minimize health risks and avoid costly lawsuits.

There is a silver lining: Companies that implement proactive systems to ensure food safety and quality have discovered additional financial benefits for the business due to increased efficiency and improvements in supply chain management.

Companies operating with the traditional “pencil-and-clipboard” approach expose themselves to a blanket recall if consumer safety issues plague their products. However, companies that use barcodes, radio frequency identification (RFID) or wireless mobility equipment that capture tracking and traceability data are better positioned to quickly identify and address problems.

Systems must be in place to isolate the source and control the problem whether it is a bioterrorism threat or contaminated water draining into crops. Automated data capture systems allow this process to specifically track the production batch, thereby identifying the trouble, isolating the contamination and helping to rectify the situation before it becomes a pervasive problem.  

Financial Benefits
Food traceability is another tool companies can employ to differentiate themselves from competitors.  For example, if a food processor promotes the use of American-grown products, a system must be in place across its supply chain to ensure that at each level of production the ingredients are from only American farmers and manufacturers. While consumers may not be able to taste the difference of American-grown products, they buy the product based upon the company’s guarantee that all of the ingredients are grown domestically.

Traceability becomes increasingly important in niche markets such as organic, cage-free eggs. Concerns about the integrity of organic products have led the FDA to implement mandates that producers and distributors must meet in order to qualify under organic or cage-free classifications. For many companies, mandates cause a manufacturing process challenge. However, if companies or industries as a whole take the initiative to implement sufficient systems, they can be designed to optimally monitor and sustain standards.

Improving the Supply Chain
U.S. government studies claim American companies spend $1.6 trillion annually on supply related activities including the movement, storage and control of products across the supply chain.

One key to food processing and manufacturing companies’ success is often rooted in limiting the overheard associated with the supply chain. Many traceability systems pay for themselves in six months because of their dramatic increase in efficiency.

By having an automated tracking system in place, processors tie their business operations together. Finding the right technology partner allows a food processor to develop a tracking and traceability data-capture system tailored to company’s needs rather than implementing a one-size-fits-all government-mandated or software package system.

Food processors focused on traceability and their technology partners can develop, implement and integrate with an enterprise resource planning system that incorporates financial, accounting and manufacturing control systems. These programs help ensure the business has streamlined as many elements as possible.

The issue is that many food processors are doing their tracking with pencil and paper. Although this complies with mandates, it does not provide any improvement in operational efficiency. Maintaining traceability records with pencil and paper is expensive due to time and lost opportunities. Technology, on the other hand, enables compliance and, at the same time, improves processes.

How it Works
So what can a company hoping to avoid recalls and lawsuits expect to implement? Industry standards include barcode scanning and label printing technology to track and identify jobs, people and materials.

Companies looking to take the next step may choose an RFID tag encoding and scanning system for automated scanning of materials.

Aided by artificial intelligence techniques, programs can generate warnings at the moment problems occur. The barcodes or RFID tags are identifiers, which store information on a computer database.

Database records contain part numbers, quantity, vendor, lot number, container type, location, age, quality-control status and cost.

To link the entire enterprise, wireless mobile computing may be utilized to provide managers and other supervisors real-time data collections stored to a central database. Linking across the supply chain to include a variety of food-processing facilities and warehouses is done via the Internet.

Prior to supply arrival, companies may require that vendors apply barcodes to ensure the product is traced from the original location. As materials enter the facility, a tracking application is used to connect with a supplies database and accounting system. As the process continues, all materials are tracked through the production cycle to record what supplies enter each batch.

From here, picking, packing and shipment can all be monitored right down to which products were loaded to specific boxes and then shipped on a certain truck. If the products are packaged incorrectly, the error is caught prior to shipment.

The complete process helps ensure food processing facilities effectively track back from finished goods to find the problem. Then, they can trace forward to where the product was distributed and pull the products prior to mass recall.

Many food manufacturers still operate with dated traceability standards and often find themselves having to comply with blanket recalls. This approach pushes food processors back on their heels, leaving them reeling to find answers.

Implementing an automated data capture system in advance of mandates can help companies meet the trends of restaurants and grocery stores requiring suppliers to have electronic food traceability systems in place. The newest technologies can rapidly recall “one-step-backward” and “one-step-forward” traceability data when required. Armed with accurate information in real time helps food processors isolate the issue quickly, resolve it, limit losses and get up and running again.

Gary Jahnke is vice president of sales and marketing for Miles Data Technologies, an Appleton, Wis.-based bar code and RFID systems integrator. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .