A new packing traceability system supplied to Agroleaf Ltd (Newby Farm) by the Stevens Group of Blackburn is paying dividends for the soft-fruit farmer and packer.

Chris Hoggard has been operating Agroleaf Ltd (Newby Farm), a commercial strawberry and raspberry farm at Huggate, East Yorkshire, since 1994, supplying large supermarket chains and smaller local farm shops with freshly grown strawberries and raspberries.

In 1997, Hoggard won his first order from Asda and continues to supply the supermarket. In addition, The Co-operative has joined the expanding group of nationwide supermarket chains selling his products. His company now has an annual turnover of approximately £2 million.

The Stevens Group has extensive knowledge and experience in the area of fresh produce weighing across the UK and the US, and the installation of the DAWS (Dynamic Average Weight System) Vantage allows legal conformity of the finished packed product while virtually eliminating giveaway.

Operators are required to weigh each product on a scale as they are guided through an ultra-responsive and quick weighing system. The six weighing systems are networked to a management PC, where the traceability and yield information is stored for Average Weight legislation conformity.

As legislation requires that the batch average must be at least the weight of the declared weight, DAWS allows the target weights to be continually adjusted in accordance with the legislation, to ensure giveaway is reduced to almost zero.

The fruit and vegetable packing process has been considered to be an area of huge technological advancement but, despite this progress, the key part of the process - the packaging process - is still reliant on the operators and their personal target weights. The inconsistent nature of fruit and vegetables means that packaging can be a complex process. Many packaging facilities are now packing in accordance with the Average Weight legislation and, at the same time, making every effort to reduce giveaway. Even a few grams on each pack can produce a significant financial loss for the packaging site. In Hoggard’s case, he has reduced his seven per cent annual over-usage to almost zero.

Hoggard originally purchased six DAWS Vantage Systems but has recently added a further two systems to the line.

Stevens’ UK sales manager Toby Hawkins said: “Agroleaf Ltd (Newby Farm) gave us an exciting opportunity to take our well-established Vantage Traceability System and extend its application to the production lines. Agroleaf provided a clear specification to work to and our software department was able to transform the requirement into a very fast and dependable system.”

The DAWS Vantage System can produce an impressive range of reports, giving a detailed and instant view of the operation at any given time. Typical reporting data relates to operator performance, line efficiency and product performance, plus a variety of traceability reports for legal purposes.

Hoggard said: “In addition to providing legal compliance and traceability and stock data, Stevens has enabled us to turn our production yield goals and ambitions into reality.

“Like us, they are a company who pride themselves on being flexible. They took a standard product and moulded it to fit our process exactly and we are delighted with the financial improvement that DAWS has had on our bottom line,” he added.

A DIRECT APPROACH

Foodservice specialist Fresh Direct is saving money and improving customer service by using Isotrak’s Active Transport Management System (ATMS) within its transport fleet operating across the UK.

Fresh Direct expects to have saved more than £300,000 when ATMS is rolled out across the whole fleet at the end of the year.

The £300,000 saving will be the direct result of using Isotrak’s CANbus engine management interface to monitor and improve driving styles across a wide range of vehicles, augmenting Fresh Direct’s existing internal driver training programme. The expected cost reduction will comfortably exceed the six per cent fuel saving initially projected by Isotrak, meaning Fresh Direct has already broken even on its investment in ATMS.

Additional savings of £8,000 have been realised in the last two months alone, due to a mileage reduction of 34,500 miles. This has been achieved by increasing utilisation of vehicles and efficiency of routes run, thanks to the real-time operational visibility provided by Isotrak’s vehicle tracking and performance monitoring.

ATMS has also permitted Fresh Direct to adopt a much more proactive approach to customer service, not only by providing accurate updated delivery ETAs based on real-time vehicle location, but also by minimising paperwork and admin for drivers. Isotrak’s in-cab data terminal downloads job details from Fresh Direct’s Paragon routing software, and allows drivers to easily provide accurate notification of completed drops to monitor turnaround time.

Finally, ATMS’s built-in reports facilitate comprehensive debriefs for each driver, which helps transport managers to understand and minimise variations from plan, monitor the impact of driving styles on fuel economy and obtain valuable customer feedback.

Nick Allen, head of logistics at Fresh Direct, said: “Isotrak’s ATMS has transformed our communications and interactions with customers, while also showing us where and how we can make changes to use less fuel and work more efficiently.”

USING IT TO REDUCE WASTE AND BOOST PACKHOUSE PROFITABILITY

This month, Anglia Business Solutions outlines how investing in the IT systems used in your company’s packhouse can improve profitability and reduce wastage throughout the packing process.

The packhouse work environment in fresh produce is one of the most challenging in the supply chain industry. It consists of managing large volumes of low-cost items moving through the production process in extremely tight time slots. These have to comply with demanding quality, packaging, delivery and traceability standards. Getting it wrong can have serious customer service issues.

As pressure on margins increases, the challenge that management teams face is to cut costs without affecting quality and customer service. Fresh produce companies have made considerable investments in sophisticated plant automation to improve productivity. These have had a significant impact that has enabled organisations to scale their operations to meet market demand. The investments are easy to justify on labour productivity alone.

However, in the majority of cases, investments in IT production systems have failed to keep pace.

The reality is that in many organisations, the packhouse environment is a part of the business where management lacks visibility of the processes that satisfy customer demand. In the past, the packhouse has been described as a black hole when it comes to monitoring profitability. Yet it is the area where most costs are incurred and value is added. In addition, it is still highly labour-intensive. The difficulty has been comparing the costs and feasibility of monitoring all aspects of the production process with the potential benefits.

As in most other areas of supply chain industries, the production process can be extremely wasteful. This can have a significant impact on profitability. In general terms, the waste elements cover some of the following topics -

• Over-production: The labour costs of over-packing as well as the wasted packaging may not seem much on a daily basis. However, over a year, these can represent a substantial cost to the business.

• Waiting: Delays in business processes reduce the velocity of the supply chain. For example, having production people standing around while waiting for product costs money, while impacting on productivity.

• Transportation: If employees have to waste time looking for goods, it reduces the processing time while increasing staff costs.

• Administration: Forcing production employees to manually record information that could be produced by the system. Apart from the risk of transcription errors, administration is a necessary but unprofitable activity.

• Poor quality: Creates unnecessary re-working, which increases costs and reduces margins.

Looking at each of these in isolation, it is easy to justify doing nothing by rationalising that the business does not do too badly against the competition in these areas. However, the recent trend towards lean manufacturing in production processes, coupled with prevailing competitive forces, is forcing many management teams to examine all aspects of their business models. The objective is to compete more effectively by working smarter rather than harder. The production area is now coming under scrutiny as part of this process.

Where recent developments in IT can help is by making the tools that office-based staff take for granted available to the production people. Extending relevant business information to the personnel responsible for delivering the company’s promises can make a difference in reducing waste.

Powerful, fully integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications were once only available to large organisations with massive resources and extended timelines. The entry of world-class software companies such as Microsoft into the mid-market has meant that small- and medium-sized enterprises can take advantage of these state-of-the-art solutions at affordable prices.

Extending these powerful solutions to the mobile workforce can ensure that business processes are optimised as operational practices are refined. For example, by integrating order intake with the production process, it provides the packhouse with advance notification of the work schedule as orders arrive. As product moves through the pack lines, it automatically notifies fork-lift drivers when produce is needed or requires shifting to dispatch. In the meantime, production supervisory staff have a real-time view of every order’s progress at each of its production cycle stages. The system is integrated with finance, so measuring profitability keeps the commercial people happy.

In such an environment, wasted activity is reduced and operational productivity greatly increased. Apart from improving morale - operational people are usually at the back of the queue where IT investment is concerned - seamlessly integrating all of the supply chain applications has significant other commercial advantages. It reduces the packaging and produce waste, as well as administration costs. More importantly, it provides management with vital business trend information as events happen in the supply chain. This makes it easier to compete using dynamic information as a business aid.

ONLINE TOOL FOR ASIA FAIR

Trade visitors to Asia’s only fresh fruit and vegetable trade fair can now plan their visit in advance thanks to a new online service that has just been launched.

Virtual Market Place (VMP) is the new online tool that allows users to see which companies are exhibiting at this year’s Asia Fruit Logistica, which takes place in Hong Kong at the beginning of September.

Gérald Lamusse, managing director of Global Produce Events GmbH, organiser of the event, said: “The VMP profiles all the companies exhibiting at this year’s Asia Fruit Logistica. It is an excellent tool to help you plan your visit to Hong Kong this year, as it lists the products of all exhibitors and enables you to contact each exhibitor directly. That makes it very useful to help you set up your business meetings in advance.”

VMP is a free service that is open for everyone to use and currently profiles companies from 29 countries spanning all five continents. Exhibitors can be contacted and more material can be requested via e-mail.

Asia Fruit Logistica takes place at Hong Kong’s Convention & Exhibition Centre on September 2-4, alongside the Asiafruit Congress, Asia’s only conference and networking event for the Asian fresh fruit and vegetable business, which attracts some 600 delegates from every sector of the business.

Lamusse added: “The VMP helps you gear up for the event and achieve maximum benefit.”

ASDA CHOOSES PARAGON

Asda is reducing the cost of transporting goods by using advanced map-based transport optimisation software.

The routing and scheduling system from Paragon Software Systems allows Asda’s logistics experts to model better routes and make more efficient use of its fleet and drivers. This is forecast to save Asda between five and 10 per cent on the fleet costs of transporting goods to stores, which the company re-invests into the business to reduce costs to shoppers.

Liam Fletcher, Asda’s network efficiency manager, said: “Paragon is our strategic tool of choice for reviewing and modelling best routes. It will also help us to maximise the use of our time. The savings we will make are ploughed back into the business.”