IT-controlled goods flow optimizes production
Industry 4.0 is not just a fancy buzzword at Haspel, but has been implemented in the company for two years: people, products and logistics communicate with the ERP system winweb-food, thereby optimizing the flow of goods and guaranteeing traceability.
The employee at the cutting room output taps each crate on the touchscreen that has not already been identified by a top label and selects the item that is inside it.
In Goods receipt At the Haspel meat manufactory in Middle Franconia, around 3,500 pig carcass halves are delivered, weighed and quality checked every day. An effortless Traceabilityensure the incoming goods batches that are automatically assigned by the system with each delivery. The employees in the Breakdown are informed about which incoming batch is being processed, and select it in the system. In the processing output, all processed items are finally posted to daily production batches, which are separated according to country of origin and quality program.
At the i-point, the cutting output, three scanners are mounted that identify each crate individually: Two side scanners check whether it is a red or blue crate. Red crates for external use are transported on to packaging or to fresh Storage. Blue E-Performance crates for internal Goods movement have a fixed barcode that survives the crate washing process and informs the system at which tipping station the respective crate must be emptied. Another scanner checks from above whether there is a preprinted top label with barcode in the crates that the butcher has placed there. In this way, it informs the system what is in the crate when, for example, cuts are transported where it is not visually apparent whether they come from the shoulder or ham conveyor.
The production manager has everything in view: The completed customer ord – ers are recorded in real time and compared with the target quantity.
The employee at the cutting line exit always has four crates in view on his screen, which are transported past him continuously and without stopping the conveyor belt. On the touchscreen, the operator taps each individual crate that has not already been identified by a top label, and then also selects by touch the item that is inside it. Next, the crates are weighed and the weight is stored in winweb-food, so that the system now combines everything: Item xy is located in this crate with this weight. The item, the batch number and all other production-relevant information are sent to the labeling machine, which prints the item number and description, best-before date, NVE and barcode on a label for each red E2 crate and automatically sticks it to the intended position on the crate by means of a compressed air stamp. Blue crates do not receive a new NVE, since each crate can be clearly identified by the permanently attached code.
After that, the boxes pass through a metal detector. In order to achieve the best possible detection rate, a separate detection program is stored in the system for each item, which is automatically set for each box. If metal is detected, the box is diverted by a pusher. The system receives feedback and logs the diverted box for the quality journal, in order to then be transported to a previously defined storage location. Here, the diverted goods are Quality assurance and analyzed and evaluated for internal audits. If the metal detector does not respond, the scanner reports the number of the passing crate to the system, which selects the corresponding destination storage, posts it to inventory and sets the switches for automatic transport: fresh meat is conveyed to fresh storage, bones to the bones tipping station, rinds to the rinds tipping station and so on.
The breakdown takes place on three parallel processing lines.
“The switch to Winweb was an operation ‘on the open heart’ for us: We had to disconnect our existing system at twelve o’clock on a Friday and put winweb-food fully into operation at four o’clock on the following Monday. That was only possible through professional advance planning by Winweb and the corresponding preparation effort on our part. But the effort was worth it: All company areas benefit from a wide range of optimizations and simplifications of work processes”, says Operations Manager Florian Stadelmann. For this reason, Haspel also relies on Winweb and Industry 4.0 at the production facility expanded only in 2016, where meat preparations, fresh meat and frozen products for the catering industry and food retail are produced: The customer orders recorded in winweb-food become production orders and are processed at a touch terminal. From there, the machines are controlled all the way through to packaging and price labeling, which is carried out according to individual customer requirements while taking into account calibration law, the Food Information Regulation (LMIV) and the Prepackaged Goods Regulation (FPVO). “This enables us to produce meat and meat products that have a high degree of customer-specific variation at a consistently high level of quality”, says Operations Manager Stadelmann.
The Fleischmanufaktur Haspel e. K. was founded 30 years ago by Managing Director and owner Georg Haspel and specializes in fine cuts and customer-specific products in the pork sector. Around 200 employees work at the company headquarters in Dombühl in Middle Franconia, where they process more than 400 pig carcass halves per hour, cut them according to individual customer specifications, prepare them and package them.
Images: Winweb/Haspel
Published in „Fleischwirtschaft“
Winweb Content Team
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