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Information in
food supply
chains
Overview
The organisation and regulation of the supply of safe
and nutritious foods is one of the key responsibilities
of a society in order to ensure political stability and
a thriving economy. The responsibilities are shared
among a large number of players and in the UK, the
systems occasionally break down into a food scandal.
Salmonella in eggs and horse meat and campylobacter
in poultry are just 3 examples where the system has
fallen over and consumers have lost faith in the food
they are eating. It is estimated that the horse meat issue
wiped 300m (Guardian newspaper) off of Tescos share
price, there are many more examples.
www.theiet.org/design-production
3. Waste Example 2
The need for a reduction in food waste at all points in
the supply chain to maximise the proportion of food that Traceability of raw materials in complex food products
ends up being eaten, as opposed to being wasted. A factory is required to maintain a system of traceability
on raw materials flowing through its process and
4. Consumer needs packing operations. So, a delivery of flour to a bakery
The need to fulfil the consumer needs for information will be allocated a batch code and the progress of that
about what they are eating and also their requirement batch of material will be tracked through the factory, so
for reassurance of the product quality and safety. the final products produced from it will be known. In
the event of a problem being discovered with the flour,
Current technology it will be exactly known which products were made
from it, so that recall procedures can be efficiently
Information flows up and down the food supply chains carried out. In most factories these systems are manual
in many ways. Some information flow is automated and and paper based, leaving them open to error and a
moves quickly and other information is manual and loss of traceability. Each part of the food supply chain
does not flow very far or very fast from the point where needs to carry out these systems, but it is only when
the data was collected. an incident occurs that they are fully tested and they
often fail, meaning that a larger recall has to be carried
out than if the systems were working automatically.
The operation of manual tracking systems in food
factories is becoming ever more complex, as the list
of allergens and other food safety concerns rise. So as
well as tracking the material, the factories now have to
track the hygiene routines of the machinery used on a
product. For example, to ensure that a filler used for a
meat product, is correctly cleaned before being used
on a non-meat product and documenting that cleaning
process so that it can be proven in the event of an issue.
packs are needed. If the order has been over estimated, 2. The intelligent factory
then too much spinach will have been harvested Here is an opportunity to develop and implement linked
and packed. If too little has been estimated, then the up data and information systems to create a factory that
farmer has to rush spinach to the packer with special is intelligent. Examples can be found below.
vehicles and the packer has to change over production
lines. The industry has learned to cope with this kind n Currently, when there is a problem in a food process
of situation by almost always over estimating, as the (say a loaf of bread is too dark in colour when it exits
implications of being late delivering or under delivering the oven) the process is adjusted , either manually
to a major retailer are horrible to contemplate. The or automatically, to compensate for the issue.
over estimation causes waste and less fresh produce This feedback control is the way that most food
reaching the consumer than would be the case if the processes are controlled to keep the products within
order was transmitted with 48 or 24 hours notice. specification. Over a period of weeks the process
drifts, with all of the compensating adjustments to
The optimisation of the whole supply chain would process that are taking place. Gradually, the process
be possible if there was sufficient time between the becomes less stable, as all of the adjustments are
consumer placing an order and the delivery being made to the minimum level to just bring the product
required. The retailers could pass this optimisation back into specification. Even quite small changes
on to the consumer in the form of a discount if more in the raw materials or process can then cause the
notice was given. This would encourage consumers to product to fall out of specification very quickly. This
plan ahead for a proportion of their shopping and could situation could be solved if there was more analysis
have a great deal of impact on the supply chain, which of process and raw material data from more sensors.
could reduce cost on the back of the efficiency savings The true root cause of a dark colour bread exiting
they are able to make. The online orders could be used the oven could be found and that cause could be
to measure the shape of the demand curve and so an tackled and corrected leaving the process with all of
estimate for the total order of a product could be more its inbuilt buffers for normal variation. By working with
accurately predicted. With statistical analysis, it would imbedded statistical process control, the processes
be possible to extrapolate from the online orders, the would be more stable and able to deliver high quality
total orders for a product. So if 1.5 % of the online products with optimal efficiency.
shopping orders for a Thursday contain 200g creamy
coleslaw, what does that mean for the total shopping n The use of networks of sensors within the process
population on the day? could monitor and control the process and the
condition of the machinery. There is a reluctance
to load too many sensors into current processes
because the vast quantity of data that would
be generated would not be easy to analyse and
would hide what was going on inside a forest of
data. As a result of this thinking, data collection is
usually limited to certain critical control points and
some others necessary for operator safety. With
an intelligent factory, the data would be collected
and analysed automatically and with self-learning
algorithms the factory would know what good
looked like, in terms of the process and materials.
Recommendations
1. Involve all parts of the food supply chain in examining
what they would need from information systems to be
able to optimise the whole supply chain.
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