IT-driven flow of goods optimizes production
At Haspel, Industry 4.0 is not just a fancy buzzword but has been put into practice across the company for the past two years: people, products and logistics communicate with each other via the winweb-food ERP system, thereby optimizing the flow of goods and ensuring traceability.
At the cutting area output, the employee taps each crate on the touchscreen that has not already been identified by a pre-applied label, and selects the item it contains.
In the goods receiving area of Fleischmanufaktur Haspel in Middle Franconia, around 3,500 pig carcass halves are delivered and weighed every day, and their quality is inspected. Effortless traceability is ensured by the goods receipt batches automatically assigned by the system for each delivery. Employees in the cutting department are informed which incoming batch is being cut and select it in the system. At the cutting output stage, all cut products are assigned to daily production batches, which are kept separate by country of origin and quality program.
At the I-point, the cutting line exit, three scanners are installed to identify each crate individually: Two side-mounted scanners determine whether it is a red or blue crate. Red crates for external use are transported onward to packaging or the fresh-products warehouse. Blue E-Performance crates used for internal goods movements have a permanent barcode that withstands crate washing and tells the system at which tipping station each crate must be emptied. Another scanner checks from above whether the crates contain a preprinted barcode label placed there by the cutter. This tells the system what is in the crate, for example when trimmings are being transported and it is not visually apparent whether they come from the shoulder or ham line.
The production manager has a complete overview: Completed customer or – ders are recorded in real time and compared with the target quantity.
The employee at the cutting area exit can always see four crates on the screen as they are transported past continuously without the conveyor belt stopping. On the touchscreen, the operator taps each crate that has not already been identified by a label placed on top, and then also uses the touchscreen to select the item it contains. Next, the crates are weighed and the weight is saved in winweb-food, so the system now brings everything together: Item xy is in this crate at this weight. The item, the batch number and all other, production-relevant information are sent to the automatic labeler, which prints the item number and item-description, best-before date, SSCC and barcode on a label for each red E2 crate and automatically applies it to the designated position on the crate using a pneumatic applicator. Blue crates do not receive a new SSCC, as each crate can be uniquely identified by its permanently attached code.
The crates then pass through a metal detector. To achieve the best possible detection rate, a dedicated detection program is stored in the system for each product, which is selected automatically for each crate. If metal is detected, the crate is rejected by a pusher. The system receives confirmation and logs the rejected crate in the quality journal, after which it is transported to a predefined warehouse location. At this location the rejected goods are examined for quality assurance and internal audits and the results are evaluated. If the metal detector is not triggered, the scanner reports the number of the passing crate to the system, which selects the appropriate destination warehouse, posts the crate to inventory and sets the routing for automatic transport: Fresh meat is transported to the fresh-meat warehouse, bones to the bone tipping station, rinds to the rind tipping station and so on.
Carcass cutting takes place on three parallel processing lines.
„Switching to Winweb was like ‚open-heart surgery‘ for us: We had to disconnect our existing system at twelve noon on a Friday and have winweb-food fully operational by four o’clock the following Monday. This was only possible thanks to professional advance planning by Winweb and the corresponding preparation on our part. But the effort paid off: Every area of the company benefits from a wide range of workflow optimizations and simplifications“, says plant manager Florian Stadelmann. For this reason, Haspel also relies on Winweb and Industry 4.0 at the production facility that was expanded in 2016, where meat preparations, fresh meat and frozen products are produced for the food service sector and grocery retail: The customer orders recorded in winweb-food are converted into production orders and processed at a touchscreen terminal. From there, the machines are controlled all the way through to packaging and price labeling, which are carried out in accordance with individual customer requirements and in compliance with weights and measures legislation, the Food Information Regulation (FIR) and the Prepackaged Products Ordinance (PPO). „This enables us to produce meat and meat products with a high degree of customer-specific variation while maintaining a consistently high level of quality“, says plant manager Stadelmann.
Fleischmanufaktur Haspel e. K. was founded 30 years ago by managing director and owner Georg Haspel and specializes in fine cuts and customized pork products. Around 200 employees work at the company’s headquarters in Dombühl, Middle Franconia, where they cut more than 400 pig carcass halves per hour, trim, prepare and package them according to individual customer specifications.
Images: Winweb/Haspel
Published in „Fleischwirtschaft“
Winweb Content Team
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