Company helps retailers trace produce

23rd August 2013

By: David Oliveira

Creamer Media Staff Writer

  

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The difficulty of tracing a product is due to incorrect serialisation and infrastructure, one of the biggest challenges in the retail industry, says systems integrator and supply chain, identification and mobility solutions provider Zetes.

“This can have life-threatening consequences, as in instances where a consumer has an allergic reaction to a food product, owing to food products not being labelled or packaged correctly, or where the wrong ingredients are added – which means that being able to trace a food product from manufac-turing to retail stores is important. In the event of a claim, it should be possible to trace the product and its ingredients using the data provided by serialisation,” says Zetes national business development manager for packaging execution solutions Francois Kotze.

Zetes provides supply chain solutions and services to assist the retail industry – from manufacturers, warehousing centres, logistics services and retailers to the consumer. Zetes’ Atlas, Medea, Ares, Chronos, Athena and, more specifically, Olympus software systems, combined with the correct hardware, can track a product at any point in the supply chain. Products’ unique serial numbers and/or barcodes are scanned and recorded at every stage of the supply chain, for example, before they are loaded onto trucks, enabling easy traceability.

At retail level, serialisation allows retailers to have the freshest produce on their shelves and also allows them to maintain stock levels more accurately.

Food waste in the supply chain is a big challenge in the retail industry and Kotze believes that this is directly related to inade-quate product marking and traceability. “Before fresh produce is made available to consumers, it needs to be marked with the correct serialisation code. “For example, if 60 000 cases of apples are packaged in a 24-hour shift and the product is only marked with a product-related barcode, but no date, batch or time of release from the factory is included, it becomes unclear as to which of those cases were packaged first. Therefore, damaged and close-to-expiry goods can be loaded onto trucks as the person packing the truck cannot determine the freshness of the goods,” says Kotze.

Zetes’ offering is a solution that tracks all goods, allowing companies to prevent dam-aged, old or incorrectly marked products from being dispatched to the market. The system allows clients to generate an invoice and all the relevant documents per-taining to the amount and type of stock delivered to stores. The damaged and suspect goods, as well as goods not ordered, are left behind on the delivery vehicle for return, which not only ensures that bad produce never reaches retail shelves, but that the paperwork related to delivery is accurate, he explains.

Another challenge of dealing with food waste is retailers who have a smaller stock-holding and who do not manage their stock-holding correctly. Product from stockholding still needs to be placed onto shelves and the product is sometimes delivered twice, resulting in a product being overstocked. Older stock will be placed on the shelves first, which, in the case of fresh produce, could lead to newer stock going bad before it can be sold.

Produce not being identified properly further exacerbates food waste, explains Kotze. Often, not even the supplier is sure that the correct pallet is received because it is incorrectly serialised and, therefore, can-not be traced.

He says Zetes has to deal with teams from all areas of the supply chain, especially retailers who do not understand what the Consumer Protection Act’s and international nonprofit member association GS1’s labelling standards require of them. Many retailers are also not aware of the technological tools available to the industry, such as automated serialisation, marking and labelling equipment, sign-on screens, mobile printing and data traceability control.

“Automated marking and labelling machines include applicators and laser, ink-jet and print-and-apply machines. Products can be identified using a camera or any other image-identifying equipment and then labelled correctly with the automated marking and labelling equipment,” he explains.

Edited by Tracy Hancock
Creamer Media Contributing Editor

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