The Satellite Review Magazine The Satellite Review Magazine Vol 3 | Page 14

EASING RECALL
BURDENS

Recall
Burdens at the
Easing

warehouse

With a WES, food professionals can
track inventory or raw materials (and
any number of attributes, such as lot
numbers, temperatures, etc.) throughout a product’s life cycle. The system
logs the product’s every move until it
is loaded onto a truck for delivery. This
creates an audit trail of every person
and piece of equipment that touched
that inventory as well as every adjustment made along the way. But, tracking and tracing capabilities go beyond
the product’s movement within the
warehouse’s four walls. Utilizing its
flexibility to interface with other software systems like enterprise resource
planning (ERP) and host systems, a
WES can also capture batch data from
the growers and manufacturers and
marry the data with the lot information created during processing. Then,
the system carries that data throughout each subsequent step in the supply
chain—from storage, to packaging, to
transportation, to the retail store shelf.

Mitigating Recalls

By Dave Willliams

Director of Software and Solutions Delivery, Westfalia Technologies, Inc.

F

rom reports of cashews tainted with Salmonella, to
beef patties contaminated with wood, to spinach
containing allergens, to the now infamous Chipotle
Mexican Grill E.coli outbreak, recalls and foodborne illnesses are regular fixtures in today’s news.
Recalls are costing food manufacturers millions of dollars
and negatively affecting companies’ brands—a July 2015
report from Swiss Re, a reinsurance company, estimates
that half of all food recalls cost the affected companies more
than $10 million. As more industry and government regulations, such as the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA),
come into play to reduce recalls and prevent illnesses, food
professionals are looking for ways to comply with these
standards and advance their food safety efforts. A good
place to start is by tracking and tracing goods with warehouse automation technology.

Traceability Using Warehouse Automation
Warehouse automation technology is proving effective in
helping food manufacturers and distributors reduce and
prevent detrimental recalls through advanced track-andtrace capabilities. One of the most powerful tools enabling
traceability is a warehouse execution system (WES).
Typically, companies have relied on two separate software
applications—a warehouse management system (WMS) and
a warehouse control system (WCS)—to manage inventory
and materials handling throughout a facility. However, a
WES can combine the functionality of a WMS and WCS
in a single application to optimize, manage and control internal material flow and order picking without the need for
complex integrations.

How does a WES assist in the recall
process? With the data captured,
food companies can quickly access
detailed product information in real
time. Therefore, if a product must be
recalled, it is easy to search the system
for a batch or lot with a particular UPC
or SKU and pinpoint when it departed
and to where. With this specific information, manufacturers can pull only
the affected items from store shelves.
There is no need to spend valuable
time and money removing every single
product—an extremely expensive and
inefficient approach that often draws
more negative attention to the issue at
hand. For example, in 1982, Johnson &
Johnson famously spent $100 million
pulling all Tylenol products from the
shelves after discovering bottles containing cyanide. Although this was a

precautionary action to ensure that all
tainted products were off the market,
Johnson & Johnson could have saved
a great deal of money if it could have
identified which lot contained tampered bottles and pulled just that lot.
It is also possible to link manufacturing data from a WES to a retailer’s
point-of-sale system. A recall could
be as simple and low key as an automatic phone call to alert those who
purchased the item in question. Also,
with reliable data and accurate audit
trails, food manufacturers can prove
compliance with safety regulations,
like FSMA, and confidently give consumers peace of mind that they have
withdrawn all affected products.

Integration with an AS/RS
While a WES can streamline manual
materials handling efforts, it provides
additional value when integrated with
an automated storage a nd retrieval
system (AS/RS). These robotic systems
can optimally store layers and cases,
with and without pallets, and rapidly
retrieve them from inventory. In addition to a software system like a WES,
an AS/RS comprises four components:
a rack system to store product, a storage/retrieval machine (S/RM) running
on a floor rail, a load-handling device
or shuttle that moves product from
the S/RM to the rack, and a conveyor
system that moves goods to and from
the AS/RS to the staging areas.
Compared to a conventional warehouse storage system, a high-density
AS/RS allows warehouses to improve
their space utilization so companies
can store more products, more efficiently, in a smaller amount of space.
For the food industry, the speed that
an AS/RS moves products in and out
of the warehouse prevents the spoilage

www. WestfaliaUSA.com

of goods, like meat and dairy products.
It also enables just-in-time (JIT) order
fulfillment strategies, a methodology in which orders are brought out
when needed instead of staged hours
in advance. This attributes to keeping
products fresh and safe, as perishable
items are stored in their respective
freezers until the truck arrives. In these
cases, when the truck “checks in,” the
WES directs the S/RM to dynamically
pick and deliver the appropriate product to its designated area for loading.
At the same time, an AS/RS provides
safer materials handling and reduces redundant, error-prone manual
picking processes, thereby decreasing
the likelihood of product damage and
contamination.

Implementation
Considerations
The beauty of an AS/RS is that it can
be installed in an existing warehouse
or designed specifically for a new facility. However, many companies considering the technology are unsure where
to begin. Here are a few considerations
to get started.
• Carefully select your vendor. The
vendor should possess credentials
in your industry vertical (food,
beverage, frozen goods, etc.) and
therefore, will better understand
your business’s unique requirements. As a result, the vendor will
be able to recommend, develop
and implement a solution that
meets your particular needs.
• Purchase high-quality equipment.
Lower cost does not mean a better
business deal. You’ll find that
your initial savings will soon be
replaced by expensive equipment
downtime and repairs.
• Consider the long term. Success is
not achieved overnight, so be
(cont. pg 17)

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