Wholesalers are getting hi-tech when it comes to waste collection at New Covent Garden Market.

The market’s waste disposal contractors SITA have adopted a container weighing and identification system from IT experts Sulo, which will allow accurate monitoring of waste and allow the Covent Garden Market Authority to more effectively manage waste collection.

SITA uses front-end loaders to handle eight and 10 cubic yard containers, of which there are more than 100 on the 56 acre site. The market authority wanted SITA to adopt a system that would allow accurate monitoring and generate invoices.

The waste management company said it went for the Sulo system for its accuracy and tried-and-tested robustness.

The system uses radio frequency (RF) microchips, fitted to containers, which carry unique electronic information to identify the container and its location within the market site.

The front-end loading gear on the collection vehicles is fitted with an antenna which reads the RF chips, together with an automated digital catch weigher to weigh the containers as they are being lifted.

Details of the container ID number, weight and time of lift are automatically fed into an onboard computer in the truck cab where the information is stored on a data card. At the end of the day the cards are removed from the vehicles and the data downloaded onto an office PC which can then be emailed to the market authority.

The SITA collection vehicles operate from 5am until 6pm and every container is emptied at least five times a day. The data captured by the system indicates the weight of the waste being collected in each individual container at different times of the day.

Using the data, the market will be able to identify hot spots, where and when high volumes of refuse are accumulating and, conversely, areas where the containers are being under-used.

The system should allow a more efficient deployment of different-sized containers around the site, and more effective routing of collection vehicles.

Linda Wickenden, SITA’s contract manager at New Covent Garden, said: “The adoption of weigh and ID methodology, and the provision of the data it generates were essential requirements written into the market authority’s tender document.

“We opted for the Sulo system simply because, compared with others on the market, it’s far and away the best in terms of accuracy and - critical in such a hard-working environment - overall toughness.”

IT SYSTEMS A MUST

UK companies must have effective systems to avoid unnecessary and costly errors, an IT specialist has claimed.

David Hurley, managing director of Anglia Business Solutions, told delegates to the company’s recent fresh produce seminar: “There’s an increasing pressure and when your operating on such low margins, it doesn’t take a lot of errors to chuck you into a loss situation.”

He said having an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution means data has only to be inputted once into the company-wide system.

Without an integrated ERP system, data is often entered several times between different departments, increasing the possibility of mistakes being made.

Bob Rose, Anglia’s business development manager, said consolidation was driving change throughout the industry. “Companies are getting bigger and to continue growing they are being challenged to do more with less.

“It’s a very fast paced industry, and it’s no longer acceptable to wait to the end of the month to see data, you need to have real-time visibility.

“What do you measure your business on, what are your key performance indicators that tell you whether you’ve had a good day or not?”

He added: “An IT solution has to make the business more efficient, and if it doesn’t, it’s just throwing your money away.”

Hurley said Anglia’s LinkFresh FP3 solution, a Microsoft Navision-based system, is designed to allow each company to adapt the system to suit its individual needs.

He also pointed to Microsoft’s backing, making the product a safe bet for the future: “Microsoft Business Solutions has budgeted £2.5 billion for research and development, and it is aiming for domination of this sector, looking for 50 per cent market share.”

Redbridge Caterfresh is a company that is in the process of rolling out the LinkFresh system and Reg Jackson, systems and IT director, said he chose the solution to replace a wide number of disparate systems to create a clearer structure.

He said the Anglia and Microsoft product gave his company greater control on issues like management reporting, stock control and traceability, and allowed the business to be more efficient.

Anglia is also working on adapting its system to allow mobility, something it describes as Surround Technology.

The idea is to allow agronomists, out in the field, to link into the ERP programme remotely, using satellites.

VALIDATING THE CODES

Leading coding expert Alpha Dot has launched a bar code validation unit for its recently launched Multi System outer case coders.

The system checks the readability of each bar code to ensure it can be scanned easily throughout the distribution chain and also checks the quality of the print to prevent it falling below an acceptable level.

The validation unit is configured with acceptance values for each bar code and sounds an alarm and rejects any codes that do not match the standards.

Overall code quality is also monitored and the system can be programmed to send a signal to the Multi System to purge the printer if the quality drops below a certain level.

In addition, a “learn and compare” bar code feature on the scanner eliminates the chance of the printer applying the wrong code to the outer case.

Alpha Dot spokesman Gary Girling said: “Unreadable or inaccurate bar codes can be very costly in terms of product recall, lost production and the resulting heavy retailer fines.

“Our bar code validation unit ensures the accuracy of each code to maximise the benefit of the Multi System printers.”

The bar code scanner features an advanced software package that simplifies set up and configuration into a straight forward step-by-step process to enable ease of use by all operators.

THE MYTHS AND REALITIES OF IT

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, by their very nature, impact on all parts of a business. They can be complex and difficult to deploy and time consuming in resource terms. They can also be expensive to fund.

For this reason, not many companies volunteer to go through the exercise too many times in a management team’s lifetime. The computer industry counters this by making claims on the returns that can be made on the investment. In this article, I will be examining these claims from a fresh produce perspective to test whether they are myth or reality.

The fresh produce sector is a fast moving and dynamic industry. It is also driven by massive changes caused by consolidation and higher demands on quality and delivery. It is also subject to severely curtailed margins as retail outlets battle for market share.

In addition, the move to more conveniently packed products means that companies now have to consider the costs of adding value to the raw product. This move towards manufacturing means that companies have to learn new processes while recording much more data.

And it is not going to get any easier with issues such as product traceability scares [Sudan 1] and changing government regulations. In such an environment, companies respond either by investing in more people, to cope with the demands, or by using IT to assist, by automating more of their data processes.

So where can IT be seen to help in generating a return on investment?

In a normal, non-produce supply chain arena, it is relatively easy to define ways in which costs can be reduced or efficiency improved to justify the capital and running costs of a new business management solution.

These typically consist of improved stock utilisation leading to improved lead times, as well as a reduction in working capital. Improved visibility of stock movements have been known to reduce stock holdings by up to 20 per cent. If you have a stock holding of £1 million, funded mainly on borrowings, it is easy to achieve annual savings of £10,000 per annum in interest charges alone.

Another major area where cost savings can be achieved is in the purchasing of goods. A typical manufacturing outfit will spend about 60 per cent of its turnover on raw materials. Therefore a company with a turnover of £10 million will spend £6m on purchases. With improved forecasting information, coupled with improved access to purchasing trends, it is not difficult to shave up to five per cent off purchasing costs on an annual basis.

In the manufacturing company’s case, this could reduce running costs by £300,000 per annum. With the possible savings on just the two areas, stock and purchasing, it is possible to justify the costs of a significant system and still make a profit.

However, neither of these circumstances applies to the fresh produce industry.

Stock is rarely held in store for long and producers rarely know the price they will get for their goods until they are shipped to the retail outlets. In such circumstances, the justification for the investment has to be sought in other areas of the business.

These focus on the unique business issues faced by the industry and the difficulties of tackling these with inadequate IT solutions.

Let’s look at a typical scenario that we frequently encounter in the fresh produce sector.

A fresh produce company has earned an excellent trading reputation for sourcing and delivering high quality goods efficiently and cost effectively.

As a result it has been appointed as a category manager for a leading supermarket. Turnover has grown rapidly and the business has doubled in size over the last three years. However, costs have risen even more rapidly as headcount has increased to cope with sheer volume of transactions.

The company’s IT systems, that have worked well for the organisation in the past, now struggle to cope with the demands of the enlarged business. Their lack of functionality and agility has meant that a number of subsidiary systems have sprung up throughout the organisation.These systems have now become mission critical to the organisation. Moreover, the knowledge on how they work resides in the heads of one or two people.

The company is now in what we call the “islands of data” syndrome where key information is held in various places throughout the business.

As a result, it is difficult, if not impossible, for senior managers to have access to the up-to-date key performance indicators that drive the business. In such a scenario, it is not uncommon to find that the senior managers spend a large proportion of their time trying to extract meaningful management information. They have, in effect, become the most expensive administrators within the organisation.

It is not therefore difficult to see how a modern integrated business management solution could rapidly justify the investment in a number of ways. However in order to do so, it is necessary for the organisation to examine and quantify the current costs of doing business.

In simple terms, this means assessing the amount of data duplication taking place within the business and the number of people involved. It also means quantifying the costs of errors caused by the lack of up-to-date information i.e. shipments going astray or rejected, product stored incorrectly, or additional consignment costs unknowingly incurred.

People costs are usually the most expensive resources within any organisation. It is sobering to consider that if your net profit is two per cent of turnover, you will have to ship an additional £1m of product to cover the costs of just one employee on a basic salary of £10,000.

With an integrated business management system, the concept is that the data is entered once and used many times. This removes data duplication burden and reduces unproductive administrative costs.

If your growth plans mean that you would have to take on three further £10,000p.a. administrators to cope with the business expansion and this could be deferred for a year by the introduction of a modern integrated solution, this amounts to a £60,000 annual cost reduction that impacts the bottom line.

If instances where one or two shipments that in the past were incorrectly stored, were rejected or went missing could be prevented, you can work out the cost savings yourself. These aspects alone could justify the investment in a substantial solution.

However, the bigger picture is that a modern fully integrated business management system will become a key future requirement of any organisation wishing to exploit its market position.

The major retailers are moving towards an even greater integrated supply chain scenario. This is to reduce their costs of doing business with you, while facilitating the product traceability requirements of new legislation. In such a scenario, operating with older outdated technologies can represent a serious threat to the long term future of the business.

Given the circumstances, doing nothing on the IT front is not a viable option.

TAKING THE STRAIN

The recent food safety scares, such as Sudan 1, are set to drain the majority of food producers’ IT resources over the next 12 months, according to Ross Systems.

The company, an IT provider to the food sector, says the pressure to implement greater traceability will put strain on 55 per cent of companies’ resources, according to a survey of the sector.

However, it said none of the companies interviewed cited radio frequency tagging (RFID) compliance as a priority. Around 55 per cent believed their organisation was three years away from being RFID enabled.

Conflicting demands from retailers are blamed for the lack of adoption by 45 per cent of the producers, closely followed by cost (30 per cent) and lack of consensus on a common industry standard (18 per cent).

Despite this reticence, the study revealed the view that although the pharmaceutical industry is leading the way in RFID adoption, the food industry is hot on its heels.

Wal-Mart was perceived to be leading the charge into RFID, according to 82 per cent of those surveyed.

Steve Baxter, managing director of Ross Systems said: “It is encouraging that the majority of manufacturers are taking traceability seriously and dedicating their IT resources into getting it right. However it seems to have dislodged RFID as a priority. Few are taking measures to implement it in the near future.”