Many people like delicious and nutritious tomatoes - fresh fruit, tomato sauce or pasta. About 20 million Australians eat 22 kg of processed tomatoes each year. KAGOME, a Japanese tomato processing company established in 1899, claims to have more than 100 years of history in the field of tomato cultivation and processing. Since 2010, KAGOME's Australian factory in Echuca has begun planting and processing tomatoes to supply high quality tomato products to food companies in Australia and other countries. SICK radio frequency identification (RFID) technology enables KAGOME to ensure product traceability and greatly increase the efficiency of the production process.
The Australian Food and Consumer Goods Association (AFGC) website shows that “protecting the health and safety of consumers is the most basic requirement in the production and sale of food and daily necessities, and is also the legal obligation of all related companies.†Quality control covers KAGOME From tomato seed management, crop growth, to product shelf sales. By minimizing the use of agrochemicals and maximizing the use of natural pollination, ensure that each tomato grows in the most environmentally friendly manner for people, for crops themselves, and for the environment. Today, how to automate tomato picking and processing is a problem that needs to be solved. How to transport tomatoes from the field to the factory floor in the most efficient way is a logistics challenge.
Finding an automated identification scheme
In the field of Echuca, KAGOME used 12 harvesters to load tomatoes into 300 large-sized wide-mouth tanks with a capacity of 14 tons. Each box filled with fresh tomatoes was unloaded onto a mat and awaiting a truck (12 in total) was transported to the scale near the factory. It takes about 90 minutes from the field to the KAGOME factory. Each truck can carry three boxes at a time – that is, each truck can transport approximately 42 tons of tomatoes once. Three years ago, there was always queued trucks near the weighbridge, and the driver had to wait 12 minutes before he could weigh the tomatoes out of the truck. As part of the KAGOME quality control process, three samples must be taken from each box and laboratory tests performed to determine if these tomatoes really come from KAGOME's farm. In addition, drivers must also prepare relevant documents to record the picking process, yield and quality. This process adds to the possibility of human error in document-based quality control systems, which can cause contaminated products to reach consumers, thereby greatly increasing the probability of widespread spread of disease due to food. Therefore, in order to ensure traceability, KAGOME Australia began looking for a solution that would enable paperless automatic identification of loadometers.
Ensuring traceability: What is the best tomato identification solution?
Food traceability refers to the process of tracking the history of a product and sharing it throughout the process – the so-called "farm to table" program. Although traceability has always been a top priority in the food and beverage industry, the demand for real-time recalls has increased in Australia in recent years (due to factory processing errors or FSANZ's product recalls). . In an ideal situation, there is no need for a product recall; however, once a recall event occurs, eliminating the impact as much as possible is the focus of each food manufacturer's compensation plan. An effective tracking and tracing system consists of multiple parts. The first part is accurate and fast identification. For years, the main force of recognition was the ubiquitous bar code. Throughout the entire production process, food can be identified by a unique barcode; barcodes can be affixed to containers during processing, finished products, boxes and pallets during transport, and final retail store shelves. KAGOME experts are looking for real-time identification solutions that can deal with soil and tomato juice, as well as high temperatures and wind and rain.
Using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to simplify the picking process
With the continuous development of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and the gradual decline in cost, its application in food tracking is also becoming more and more widespread. The use of large raw material containers and bulk mixed materials is very common. It provides companies with a variety of ways to simplify and manage related processes, especially in terms of traceability and process reliability. Wireless identification technology opens up new fields for automatic data recording. Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has been used in the automotive industry for many years. After pasting a label on a vehicle body, the data of each vehicle can be written into it by coding. Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can provide more features than bar code technology because they can be read/written directly without visual contact with the tags. In addition, they are also very durable, so they can withstand the harsh environmental conditions of high temperatures, mud or moisture.
Jean-Michel Maclou, sales manager for SICK Australia, and Christian Herr, sales engineer, presented KAGOME with an RFU63x read/write device in 2012. The device can be used as a UHF radio frequency identification (RFID) solution to track and trace reusable containers, while also providing batch detection capabilities. In addition, the RFU63x can also be used as a stand-alone smart system. Integrated functions such as data processing and filtering ensure stable read performance and short read cycles. In January 2013, KAGOME installed six SICK RFU63x devices in the loadometer and unloading area of ​​Echuca, each equipped with three antennas for double-decker containers. The radio frequency identification (RFID) tag fixed to the container of the tomato bears strong resistance and good stability, and will always be accompanied by a self-picking process. The RFU63x fully meets KAGOME's need for paperless automatic identification of tomatoes. In this way, radio frequency identification (RFID) technology can be used to avoid errors that often occur during the entry and exit of goods, such as inaccuracy of quantity and quality data and loss of accounts.
SICK RFU63x Reader Does Not Need Visual Contact with RFID Tags
Radio frequency identification (RFID) can identify the source of tomatoes in real time. In the paperless recognition process, truck drivers no longer need to get off the loadometer, which improves their safety. Trucks spend less time on the weighbridge, and the long queues of trucks at the weighbridge and in front of the unloading area of ​​the tomatoes have also become a thing of the past. Delivery efficiency has increased greatly. Given that the truck's time spent on the weighbridge has been reduced from the previous 12 minutes to 2 minutes, the truck driver can run 1 more in every 12 hours of rotation.
Assuming that the fleet has a total of 12 trucks and each truck can carry an average of 42 tons of tomatoes, productivity can be increased by 504 tons through the use of new technologies for radio frequency identification (RFID). With more reliable real-time data from SICK intelligent recognition technology, KAGOME not only gains the ability to make the best decisions, but also greatly increases productivity and efficiency.
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