Food & Beverage

The food and beverage (F&B) sector is extremely complex, with critical requirements for traceability and provenance. The recent scandals in the UK around meat and fish, and the subsequent effect that these have had on shopping habits are clear evidence that the F&B industry has to treat traceability in the food chain as a top priority. And these events have led to calls for more rigorous legislation for the sector, giving even more weight to the importance of full supply chain visibility and management for all F&B businesses.

There are thousands of critical points of data capture in the F&B supply chain, and real-time visibility is essential for fast, informed decision-making. WAERlinx traceability solutions offer paperless, real-time access to inventory, production and shipment histories.

Waer understands that the needs of this sector are unique, in particular when it comes to controlling inventory and managing product quality, traceability and provenance. Our industry-specific offering includes functions to quickly identify the origin – for example, by country, producer, distributor or brand – and exact current location of any batch, lot or serial-numbered product in real time, across an extensive supply network.

As undesirable as a product recall is, WAERlinx allows you to place products on hold in real time and initiate a robust recall procedure, whenever necessary. Further, being able to clearly identify the current location and provenance of ‘good’ products can also help to eliminate unnecessary recalls.

Some of WAERlinx’ key features for F&B supply chains are:

•   Flexible features for shelf-life control help to ensure that no product is shipped if it cannot be used within the period before its expiry date.

•   Products can be categorised, for example, as perishable, frozen, refrigerated or ambient, and can have storage, docking and transportation rules specified for them that are aligned with these characteristics.

•   Special handling instructions can either be displayed for information or functionally enforced in line with requirements, and temperature-based storage, zoning and loading needs are fully supported.

•   Proven RF functions allow cases and pallets to be scanned in and out of DCs with optimum efficiency.

•   Warehouse operations including inbound and outbound processing, storage and replenishment are directed by the application, which also tracks the amount of work that is done by each operator, further improving productivity.

•   Inventory can be received, stored and tracked accurately by the customer and owner, with transfer of ownership triggering the creation of invoices.

•   Customer-specific labelling and documentation requirements are easily accommodated; each customer’s packaging needs can be specified and displayed either on screens and documents, or functionally enforced, again, subject to their specific requirements.

•   A fully auditable transaction history provides visibility of exactly which products were moved to where, and when.

•   Real-time visibility of customer demand and fulfilment status – and better predictability of demand – provide a platform for improved customer service and competitive advantage. Included in this are features for delivering direct to stores in a closed-loop demand fulfilment cycle.

•   Quality certificates and other essential documents can be scanned and stored securely.

•   Our WAERflow product allows seamless integration with other grocery supply chains, allowing you to manage your operations from one system.

•   High-value re-usable containers can be tracked using a proven RFID-based function.

•   Dedicated features for PI and stock counting help to further improve accuracy and reduce write-offs.

In short, WAERlinx is an extremely powerful tool with solid foundations that can bring significant improvements to supply chain management and traceability for the F&B sector.

Supply chain possibilities