 Companies that manufacture products for the consumer market invest considerable resources to establish and maintain the integrity of their brands. For those engaged in the food industry this means bringing to market a product whose value can be both perceived and measured.
Perceived brand value can encompass an understanding, by the consumer, of what the product is, how it looks on the shelf, how it tastes and how it is used. Measured brand value can be the investment made by the food company to establish the brand — in marketing, in research and development and in distribution as well as in the sales performance and revenue of the product.
Building a strong market position, one in which the consumer has a well-recognized and positive association with the product, requires that the manufacturer exercise a great deal of control in the product's components or ingredients and in the processes used to make it. A resource tracking and tracing system makes such control possible both in the context of a single plant and in a network of plants making the same product.
Rockwell Automation offers solutions that track and record the resources used (raw materials, people, equipment, utilities) and actions taken during each step of production, and generate a complete record for each lot of production.
Tracking and tracing solutions span the entire production process.
- Material Handling
- Receive raw materials against purchase orders, or manually
- Capture inspection data as part of the receipt process
- Assign materials to a pick list
- Mixing
- Move items from one location to another
- Visibility to all inventory items within the plant
- Containerized inventory items
- Reconcile inventory quantities
- Display recipe ingredients and required amounts
- Record execution of recipe (quantity, ingredient lot number, operator, date/time, etc.)
- Enforce configurable electronic signature (performed by, verified by)
- Support & track deviations (additions/ modifications) to production recipe
- Support production of multiple batches/containers against a single production order
- Track scrap produced against a production order (ingredients and/or finished product)
- Display recipe step and order specific instructions
- Display current batch history for each production order
- Food Production and Packaging
- Monitor one or more work centers (machine groups)
- Palletized and non-palletized production reporting
- Display label printing requirements and label format
- Display and enforce bill of material requirements
- Display and enforce HACCP data collection requirements
- Display product specifications and recipes
- Track scrap produced against a production order (components and/or finished product)
- Display performance information (target vs. produced quantity and yield)
- Track complete production and consumption
- Warehouse
- Ship finished goods against customer orders
- Reservation of finished goods against customer orders
- Capture shipping information against each shipment
- Record items shipped
- Print standard bill of lading
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