PALLET TRACKING INNOVATION

Arlington Packaging and Roke Manor Research, Siemen’s UK Innovation and product development centre, have joined forces to bring users of returnable transit containers a unique way of tracking their assets.

Utilising RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology, the robust and cost-effective system can be used in any application to track and manage transit containers, according to its developers.

Commenting on the joint venture, Harry Fairbank, managing director of Arlington Packaging (pictured, right, with Rachel Fleming from Siemens), said the system has a number of advantages.“The use of RFID within the distribution chain to track and manage transit containers will reduce losses and increase utilisation,” he said.

“That will mean fewer containers in use and fewer wasted journeys to collect or redistribute containers that are in the wrong place.

“This will reduce costs and ensure greater efficiency and ultimately benefit the environment as well.”

MANAGING THE FUTURE

Waitrose has upgraded its forecasting software to improve the management of its supply chain.

The new software is designed to allow the supermarket to predict demand for its product based on the history of each item and on any number of casual variables such as the weather, events or holidays.

Software provider SAS expects to fit 2,000 stock-keeping units across Waitrose stores.

Rob Thompson, head of supply chain at Waitrose, said: “SAS event forecasting enables us to incorporate knowledge about our business into the forecasting process and enables us to forecast the demand for thousands of items quickly and accurately.

“We anticipate that the return on investment we will achieve on reduced wastage and increased revenues will be significant.”

The system has already been trailed in three stores and will be installed in more stores so that trials can continue over Christmas.

There are plans to roll the system out to all stores during 2007.

QUICK-FIX SOLUTION

UK health, safety and risk- management specialist the National Britannia Group has signed up Muddy Boots’ Quickfire solution for its subsidiary, NB Certification Ltd, to reduce the reporting time for assessments of food producers and manufacturers.

Adrian Walker, operations support director for the National Britannia Group said the Quickfire technology would allow staff to prioritise the needs of clients over filling in forms.

He said: “Creating a tool that allowed us to computerise the assessment process was something our in-house IT department was researching however, Quickfire was a tried and tested solution that was ready to be put into immediate action.

“In addition, Muddy Boots clearly understood our market place and we were impressed with the company’s expertise.”

The National Britannia Group provides consultancy and advice to clients to help them manage and control their exposure to environmental risk, comply with legislation, improve business practice and enhance profitability.

Walker added: “Muddy Boots and National Britannia share a number of valued clients and in the longer term it makes their analysis easier if we deliver vital management information over a common platform. This was a key driver for National Britannia in choosing Quickfire.”

Prior to using Muddy Boots’ Quickfire, The National Britannia Group captured all information on paper during site visits.

Hand-written notes were left with the client and a typewritten report was provided at a later date, causing considerable administration time.

Jonathan Evans, managing director for Muddy Boots (pictured), said: “Modern technology, such as Quickfire, ensures the essential task of auditing food businesses, to make sure products are to the highest quality, is no longer a drain on businesses time and money.

“Quickfire has enabled The National Britannia Group to provide its clients with an evaluation service that is efficient and more professional.”

The National Britannia Group is now planning to extend the use of Muddy Boots’ Quickfire to the food consultancy part of the organisation, which specialises in capturing data to produce comprehensive internet- based management systems for major food manufacturers.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Digital safety: The International Food Safety & Quality Network (IFSQN) today announced the launch of its online Food Safety Standards Directory.

The online directory features food safety consultants and certification bodies to help organisations develop safety-management systems and carry out audits against the major food-safety-management systems, according to the IFSQN. It covers all the major food-safety certification schemes including the BRC - Global Standards, the International Food Standard (IFS), EFSIS, EurepGAP, SQF, FPA and the ISO 22000:2005.

The IFSQN has provided its 1,500 members worldwide with a free online discussion forum since 2003. This has enabled the exchange of ideas on a wide range of food safety issues, including the interpretation and implementation of food safety requirements, as well as the sharing of practical advice.

NO DATA SHOULD BE AN ISLAND IN THIS AGE OF OBJECT ORIENTATION

As more IT operations become available to fresh produce companies, Anglia Business Solutions demonstrates the importance of keeping pace with the latest technological developments, to allow the greatest possible flexibility in data configuration and avoid the bygone norm of battling “islands of data”.

If information technology can be a real business facilitator, the other side of the coin is that it can also be an inhibitor to growth. There was a tendency in the past in the fresh produce industry to stick with systems that are long past their sell- by date. The thinking was “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. This is like sticking with an old car because you have paid for it, even if it is painfully slow, only does five miles to the gallon and needs a lot of maintenance.

Many forward-thinking organisations have now realised that failure to take advantage of recent technological advances actually costs them real money. As business has speeded up, a cumbersome system that has not kept pace means that it is no longer fit for purpose in today’s world. Some of the symptoms of this malaise include a raft of sub-systems to plug the gaps in the main operations application. This leads to islands of data as illustrated in the diagram below.

The business impact of these systems can be the hidden costs of operating in this environment. These include high administrative overheads due to data duplication, transcription errors that cause customer queries and dissatisfaction and a lack of real management information. When the costs of operating in this way are factored into the business, the overhead costs can be substantial. It is sobering to think that to employ a £10,000-a- year administrator, you will have to ship £1 million of goods at two per cent net margin when overheads are taken into consideration, just to break even.

However, this loss of profit is not the real drawback. Much more seriously for the business is the lack of flexibility inherent in such a set-up. Systems that cannot easily or cost effectively be changed to reflect changes in the company’s business model or to respond to new client demands are a hindrance rather than a benefit to the business.

The impact can range from the inability to take advantage of a new revenue stream to the loss of a key customer. This does not just happen in smaller companies, as the following example illustrates.

An Anglia customer (not in the fresh produce sector) supplies product to a major retailer; let’s call it C & R. The retailer needed to upgrade its legacy business management system to bring it up to date. The process took eight months and cost C & R a shed load of money. Moreover, it forced the company to freeze its stock range until the upgrade was done. This meant that it could not take on any new product lines during the key selling season. The real costs in terms of lost sales to the retailer in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods market can only be imagined.

The real problem with the traditional older systems is the technologies used to create them. Many were designed prior to the arrival of new development techniques such as object-oriented technology.

The older programming languages and databases meant that designing and developing integrated business management solutions was difficult and time consuming. Any changes in one part of the programme could cause another to fail and more complex issues were a nightmare to trouble shoot.

As a result, customer-requested changes to operating solutions were slow, labour intensive and costly. In addition, upgrades were infrequent as they caused major support issues across multiple operating system platforms.

By contrast, object-oriented technology is a much more productive and flexible development environment. It works by facilitating the rapid creation of re-usable software objects in a framework where they can easily be integrated. The objects work in ranges designed by the programme authors.

As a result, other software developers can quickly add additional system functionality while customers can make high-level changes to suit their particular business processes.

For example, in the past, adding a new field to a screen or changing the field descriptions could mean waiting for a new software version and hoping that it met the need. In some modern systems, such changes can be carried out in seconds by the customer.

Lincolnshire Field Products provides a good example of this system flexibility in action within the fresh produce industry, with regards to an immediate request to change the selfbill procedures. With the company’s old legacy system, this would have been costly both from a direct and indirect viewpoint.

IT manager Paul Witherington explains: “The change to the selfbill system would have taken weeks to complete and incurred external costs to develop and implement the modifications,” he says.

“This would also have meant the double handling of invoices while the work was in progress. The LINKFresh system enabled us to carry out the changes internally within two days of notification with no external development costs.”

In today’s global marketplace, digital information has helped businesses to speed up by providing faster access to accurate information. The new wave of business management solutions has enabled companies to improve their efficiency by automating more of their processes.

This has released people to work on more productive customer-facing activities, thus improving client satisfaction. In addition, systems that are more responsive to changes in business models provide companies with the degree of agility necessary to survive and thrive in today’s cutthroat marketplace.

To see examples of how modern business-management applications have helped fresh produce companies compete, visit the LINKFresh & Microsoft Executive Briefing to be held in Cambridge on November 9.