Full traceability at your fingertips

AS A company expands, the more it requires ERP tools for optimization. Managing data in routine operations using business management software not only simplifies and increases efficiency.

CSB-System, a provider of IT solutions shares how its product works for a cake manufacturer in Germany, and a fruit and vegetable producer in the United States.

Tracking fresh produce

Fruit and vegetable supplier Freshway Foods in Ohio, United States, said it is seeing improved efficiencies, better cost control and full traceability in production after having installed a customized IT solution that tracks its raw materials and ingredients throughout the supply chain.

Since 1988, the company has been providing fresh-cut and repack produce solutions to 25 states in the eastern part of the US. Investing in a new IT solution designed by CSB-System offers the company a fully integrated system to handle traditional ERP applications along with accounting, sales and purchasing.

During the receipt of all raw materials and ingredients, costs are carefully controlled and monitored through the entering of this information into the CSB system.  The integrated Auxiliary Costs module captures the freight costs and links these to the subsequent delivery costs, eliminating manual data entry and increasing the overall efficiency of the operation to maximize return on investment.

Wherever they are, Freshway Foods employees can use their mobile devices to access information via a wireless network for the picking of products for onward supply      

For day-to-day operations CSB Warehouse Management, in conjunction with mobile software, is used to capture and store every transaction.  Data is captured throughout the production process and validated at the point of origin. Mobile devices give employees easy access to all information via a wireless network for the picking of products for onward supply.                                                                             

In this way, any product received or produced can be localized and traced back to the raw material supplier, inventory location or end customer.  Thanks to the integration of all these processes, Freshway Foods can easily calculate the landed costs for any of its products with a high degree of accuracy. This data is then used for both pricing and traceability.

“We believe in investments in quality and safety and the CSB is the best fit,” said Devon Beer, CFO of Freshway Foods. “The software keeps track of each product throughout production and maintains our high quality standards for food manufacturing data capture and costing.  CSB-System has delivered a seamless solution that has grown along with our business and offers plenty of additional firepower moving forward.”

Software for cake production

One of Germany’s leading manufacturers of frozen cakes and flans uses customized software from CSB-System to help maximize production and planning efficiencies and provide full traceability.

Established in 1988 in the Black Forest, Pfalzgraf Konditorei produces 30,000 flans and cakes every day for sale via specialist wholesalers.  With the continuing growth of the business, the IT solution from CSB-System has enabled the company to control the entire value-added chain.

Goods from Pfalzgraf’s suppliers which have an EAN 128 bar code are scanned by a mobile data recording unit, which eliminates the need for the time-consuming manual input of information

The CSB-System is used as part of production scheduling with raw material requirements calculated from the recipe and the number of products to be manufactured, and then sent directly to suppliers.

In goods receiving, this information is also made available along with other critical details for individual products such as shelf life or temperature storage requirements.  Goods from suppliers which already have an EAN 128 bar code are scanned by a mobile data recording unit, which eliminates the need for the time-consuming manual inputting of information. Raw materials without this code are provided with a self-printed bar code label by warehouse staff, which includes all the relevant information for the subsequent stages.

For each production, goods are booked out as required and weighed and prepared in preparation rooms upstream of the four production lines. CSB-Racks®, the company’s specially-designed industrial workstation for automated data capture, are linked directly to the scales and ensure that all required work steps are carried out in line with specifications.  Operators have to confirm each stage on the screen for the process to continue, thus ensuring production and recipe consistency.

Following production, each finished cake and flan can be broken down by the system into its individual raw materials and primary packaging through the EAN-code and batch number provided by the CSB system.  This enables Pfalzgraf to guarantee full traceability of its products – from receipt of goods, through production and to packing and dispatch - both internally and for its customers.

“We also always have the option of approaching the CSB developers with our own ideas and suggestions in order to program specific solutions that are tailored to our company,” said IT manager Andreas Ziegler.

Another benefit is highlighted by Pfalzgraf’s Dirk Brünz, who said “Along the way we have also learned a great deal about our production processes and can optimize these further while implementing the software.”