The Satellite Review Magazine The Satellite Review Magazine Vol 1 | Page 38

PROTECTING YOUR BRAND

Track-and-trace and Automation:
Protecting your brand and your customers
in case of recalls
By Dave Williams,

Director of Software and Solutions Delivery, Westfalia Technologies, Inc.
Approximately 48 million people in the United States fall
victim to food-borne illness each year, as reported by The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With these
devastatingly high numbers and outbreaks of salmonella
and E. Coli becoming regular fixtures in the news, the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to implement
more stringent standards and regulations, including the
Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). Despite legal
precautions, contaminated goods are still often
undiscovered until they have already reached store shelves.
The result is not only ill consumers, but costly, branddamaging recalls.
In order to mitigate recalls and their detrimental effects,
manufacturers and distributors – across a breadth of
industries, not just food— are turning to automation.
A Warehouse Execution System (WES) utilizing an

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Automated Storage and Retrieval System (AS/RS) is one of
the chief technologies making waves in an effort to reduce,
if not prevent, recalls, through sophisticated track-and-trace
capabilities.
With a WES and integrated AS/RS, manufacturers can
obtain real-time insight into their inbound and outbound
inventory, including when shipment arrives, when it
departs, and where it is going. Therefore, if a product is
recalled, it is easy to look into the system and quickly
identify the batch that contained the faulty goods, pinpoint
when it departed and to where, and pull all items from that
batch from the shelves. By identifying and pulling the exact
batch, manufacturers do not have to waste valuable time
and money removing every product from stores in an
attempt to remove all contaminated items. And, with
reliable data, manufacturers can prove compliance with

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