Industry 4.0 is not just a stylish 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.

In Goods receipt Around 3,500 pig halves are delivered daily to the Haspel meat manufactory in Middle Franconia, weighed and the quality checked. An effortless Traceabilityensure the goods receipt batches, which are automatically assigned by the system with each delivery. The employees in the Breakdown are informed which incoming batch is being broken down and select it in the system. In the cutting output, all broken down items are finally posted to daily production batches, which are separated depending on country of origin and quality program.

At the crucial 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 further to packaging or to fresh storage. Blue E-Performance crates for internalGoods movement have a fixed barcode that survives the crate washing and informs the system at which tipping station the respective crate must be emptied. Another scanner checks from above whether there is a pre-printed top label with barcode in the crates, which the cutter 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 recognizable whether they come from the shoulder or ham line.

The employee at the cutting line exit always has four crates in view on his screen, which are transported past him continuously and without the conveyor belt stopping. On the touchscreen, the operator taps each individual crate that has not already been identified by a top label and then also selects via touch the item that is in it. Next, the crates are weighed and the weight is stored in winweb-food, so that the system now combines everything: Item xy is 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 using a compressed-air stamp. Blue crates do not receive a new NVE, as each crate can be uniquely 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, after which it is 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 trigger, 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 bone tipping station, pork rinds to the pork rinds tipping station and so on.

“The switch to Winweb was an open-heart operation for us: We had to disconnect our existing system on a Friday at twelve o’clock and put winweb-food fully into operation on the following Monday at four o’clock. This was only possible through professional advance planning by Winweb and through the corresponding preparation effort on our part. But the effort was worth it: All company divisions benefit from a wide range of optimizations and simplifications of workflows”, says Operations Manager Florian Stadelmann. For this reason, Haspel also relies on Winweb and Industry 4.0 at the production facility, which was only expanded in 2016 and in which meat preparations, fresh meat and frozen products are manufactured for the hospitality industry and food retail: 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 in compliance with calibration law, the Food Information Regulation (LMIV) and the Prepackaged Goods Regulation (FPVO). “This enables us to produce meat and meat products that display a high degree of customer-specific variation while maintaining a consistently high level of quality”, says Operations Manager Stadelmann.

Haspel meat manufactory e. K. was founded 30 years ago by Managing Director and owner Georg Haspel and has specialized in fine cuts and customer-specific items in the pork sector. At the company headquarters in Dombühl, Middle Franconia, around 200 employees are employed, who process more than 400 sides of pork per hour, cut them according to individual customer specifications, prepare them and package them.

www.haspel-fleisch.de
www.winweb.de