Recent Projects: New Zealand Corporate Processor – Inventory Validation in Multiple Boning Rooms

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A recent project at a major NZ processor arose out of a desire to achieve 100% daily inventory reconciliation against daily production. The existing situation was one where cartons of product scanned into the chillers and freezers never balanced against cartons produced in the boning and offal rooms. Undeleted carton labels, cartons without labels, and carton reworks were all treated as a live label whether the carton made it to the chillers / freezers or not. Discrepancies were time consuming to identify and remedy.

As a solution to this situation, validation of carton production was enabled through Carton Manager. Using Carton Manager’s validation module Triton provided certainty that the transaction has produced a genuine carton.

  • Only those cartons that have been validated would be exported to “Inventory” meaning that reconciliation of production verses stock could be achieved with certainty.
  • Non-validated transactions are reportable, so can also be easily reconciled against unapplied labels

 

Due to the variety in boning room layouts the validation solution had to be flexible enough to cater for both manned and unmanned situations. And further complicating this was the fact that the barcode orientation over the range of labels was not consistent and neither was the label position on the different carton panels.


The smaller boning rooms were able to have the label station operator scan each carton as they moved it off the scales, but larger rooms that had multiple weigh label points needed a solution where each carton could be scanned at a central point and this needed to be unmanned. The solution to both scenarios and to the complexities with the label and barcodes was to use the Sick Lector 632 imaging scanner. The imaging capabilities of the 632 overcome the orientation and position challenges.
The wide image area of the 632 meant that the manual station operators could scan and validate the barcode within their normal movements. A green light indicated a successful scan.


The central inline automated scanning station reduced the cost of the implementation as it removed the need to have a scanner at each of their many production units. All production from the room flowed past the scanning station which also removed the need for additional Labour.


The auto scanning station consisted of:

  • Alignment and scanning conveyors with infeed gate and rejection gate using 45 degree ARB rollers.
  • Reject accumulation conveyor.
  • Sick Lector 632 imaging scanner and brackets.
  • Validation confirmation lights.

 

Since implementation of the systems reconciliation between production and inventory has become easier as the scanning rates have reached up to 100%. Freezer and Chiller staff have reported they spend less time each day looking for ghost cartons while inventory controllers have like that the scanner keeps an image of every carton leaving the room. Any carton with questionable status can be identified and resolved using the scan image.
To find out how Inventory Validation can assist with your requirements please contact us below:


solutions@tritoncomsys.com
Australia 1300 558 438 – Option 3
New Zealand 03 3483 973 – Option 3

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