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Logistics is a key factor in the food industry

Countless products from the food industry have to be delivered in continuously repeated transactions at innumerable sales points within the retail trade. At the same time they also have to remain fresh and be completely traceable. Along the whole of the value chain the products have to be identifiable — from production right through to the end consumer. One of the main goals in terms of logistics is therefore the linking of information and material flows.

The starting point needed for this is an IT-supported Supply Chain Management (SCM) within the company, which controls the logistics chains of all networked companies along the entire value chain.
The complete route of the product can be traced with the according money and information flows, starting from the suppliers and producers, to the wholesale and retail trades and right through to the customer. The goal: to achieve cost savings wherever possible. SCM systems make it possible to reduce production throughput times and delivery times, optimise storage of stock, increase capacity utilization and reduce purchasing costs.
The prerequisite for a functioning SCM is an organised and optimised in-house material flow and turnover of goods. By choosing a suitable storage strategy and incorporating a warehouse management system with a material flow processor into the SCM, optimal usage of the warehouse can be achieved.

Sophisticated warehouse management
Logistics systems used by companies are traditionally designed as manual or partly automated solutions. In the food industry it is common for both variations to be used in parallel. By integrating a high rack warehouse in the in-house processes, the flows of goods can be processed fully automatically. In addition to functioning as a distribution warehouse, high rack warehouses with 20,000 or more storage spaces can also be used as a temporary storage facility for semi-finished products or as a raw-materials warehouse. The storage and removal of pallets is carried out by transport facilities and shelf access equipment — these are operated to drive to the storage spaces in question by the material flow processor and the warehouse management system. The entire storage management can be followed online at the material flow processor terminal, allowing real-time management of the inventory. The tracking information, from the time of production right to the point at which the product is loaded, can be provided at all times.

In the food industry in general both concepts, whether manual or automated, follow the rule of either storing by batch number or by the “best-before” date, so that the stock can consistently be managed according to a FIFO (First-In-First-Out) principle. An integral part of many automated storage systems is voice-aided commissioning, which uses the “Pick-by-Voice” process. With this system the employees in the warehouse are told by a voice what process stages need to be carried out. In this way, a pick list and the best route for picking up the items is communicated via a headset worn by the operator of a floor conveyor vehicle.

Intelligent floor conveyor vehicles
The many possibilities that wireless technologies offer with regard to storage and logistics, such as wireless LAN and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), are presently being discussed in the food industry. Wireless technologies make it possible to create logistics systems comprising many small networked sub-units which make up a flexible general concept. While WLAN is best used for transferring data over greater distances, RFID brings more benefits when applied to short distances. RFID allows automatic identification and localisation of objects with the help of transponders and reader devices, for instance when using RFID-aided floor conveyor vehicles: The transponders are inside the pallets, and the antenna is integrated into the forks of the forklift. The transponders are read when the fork arms are driven into the pallet, and when removing the fork arms from the pallet. As soon as the pallet is loaded, the transponder number for the goods, or rather the pallet number, is stored in the warehouse management system. During every stage of transport the warehouse management system registers the pallet’s change of location and updates it in the database. The forklift driver can see on his terminal, which is in contact with the warehouse management system via RFID or WLAN, whether he has taken or set down the right pallet.

The discussion of technology is also evident in other areas, e.g. robotics. This is because commissioning, sorting, packaging and palletising of food are all complex and time consuming processes needing lots of employees. Robots can be used effectively to take over these processes. The prerequisite for using robot-based automated technology in logistics is a seamless interplay between the robots, grips, steering software, sensors and conveying technology. RFID and robots are among the developments which are widening the horizons for future solutions in company logistics, for example in the framework of driverless transport systems. In the foreseeable future they could lead to entirely new solutions. As part of Anuga FoodTec, the special shows “Robotic pack line” and “Auto ID RFID” will be dedicated to these topics.