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Coding upgrade improves traceability information
The product coding process at the UK's largest fresh potato company has been improved dramatically through close collaboration with coding and marking specialist MARKEM.
Greenvale AP needed to replace its existing hot foil machines: their limited capacity for variable printing - requiring operators to manually change the text - meant that the company couldn't add product and traceability details to the date codes displayed on their bags of potatoes. Greenvale contacted MARKEM to see if the team could suggest new coding equipment which could increase the information printed on to the bags, as well as simplifying the operation and improving print quality and flexibility.
Consequently, a number of SmartDate thermal transfer coders were installed. These print not only the best before date, but also the variety of the potatoes, the grower's code, the origin of the produce and also vital traceability information. The SmartDate coders are versatile enough to cope with a variety of different packaging machinery, including multi-lane thermoformers, intermittent and continuous bagging machinery as well as labelling systems.
To improve productivity at the factory further, MARKEM and Greenvale also introduced a hand-held scanning system to each of the production lines and networked the entire coding operation. When a shift begins, operators simply scan a bar-code menu attached to each individual production line. Using MARKEM's CoLOS networking software (formerly Cim-Control) information is fed live to the SmartDate coders from Greenvale's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System, Navision.
Navision manages the daily production runs and, via CoLOS, communicates instantly to the SmartDate printers the latest product information for that particular production line. The operator then checks the information is correct and signals their acceptance by pressing a line reset button that allows the information to update and start the packaging operation.This has benefited Greenvale in a number of ways — it can meet statutory requirements for traceability, satisfy retail customers' coding and labelling demands and provide all the traceability data required by an increasingly enquiring public.
The system has been so successful at Greenvale's Doddington site that it has been replicated at its factory in Duns, Scotland.
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