Talking IT up

Further similar developments are inevitable. They not only help plants save money by cutting back on repetitive paperwork and improving communications, but can also help with achieving better animal welfare and a lower carbon footprint.

Currently, the web-based booking-in system is being trialled only in the pig sector by Bpex. It is an electronic pig movement project, known as eAML2, and was initially trialled at 15 abattoirs. Gradually, it is being rolled out to other plants and will go live across the industry in England and Wales next April. It combines the Animal Movement Licence (AML2) and Food Chain Information (FCI) forms required when pigs are moved from farm to slaughter and made the whole process electronic.

Dorothea Schiemann of Bpex says: "The producer fills in details of his consignment online before sending them for slaughter and the abattoir is emailed the information automatically early in the morning before the pigs arrive. As before, the abattoir confirms the number of pigs received, any pigs dead on arrival and the consignment's unloading time. Only now, the information will be submitted online, which is quicker than handling the paper forms. The information is automatically uploaded to the central government database and a copy is sent to the local authority, so there is no longer a need for abattoirs to post AML2 forms."

At the moment, the project covers farm-to-slaughter movements only, with farm-to-farm and farm-to-market/show to follow in due course. The system is funded by Defra and is free to use all that is needed is a PC and internet access.

Such systems can save plants money, says Walsh. "The Meat Hygiene Service used to have to record this manually through the day and would spend a couple of hours at the end of shift completing their paperwork. This double entry can be eliminated to save time and money at the end of the day, as there is direct input through a portable touchscreen interfaces at the time of inspection."

Similar systems for the whole supply chain may soon be developed for use by the beef and lamb sectors too, she says.

In the abattoir

Computers are also playing an increasing role in the slaughter hall. Computer-controlled stun monitoring systems are now making the processing of animals more accurate. Such systems can monitor the precise voltage delivered and are particularly useful in the halal sector for checking that an animal is properly stunned, but still alive before slaughter. One such system, called a Stun Assurance Monitor that has been developed by Meat and Livestock Commercial Services and Hellenic Systems, is now in use in a number of plants.

Hellenic has also developed the web-based booking-in and vet health systems mentioned above, as part of a wide portfolio of IT and computer-based systems designed to help with managing the whole supply chain. These include both hardware and software systems for delivery of livestock to plants and then monitoring them, processing, warehousing and process automation.

Just a few years ago, the very latest and fastest computer technology was only available for use in offices, because it was not designed for work in industrial environments. All that has changed following the development of a new generation of processing chips.

As Peter Kettell, UK sales manager at Emydex Technology, explains, these new low-power chips help reduce the amount of heat that computer systems generate, making them adaptable for use in meat plants. Chip development has been thanks to the development of smaller, smarter technology, such as net-books, smart phones and, now, tablet PCs

"This means that almost every new processor chip developed has a low-power version from day one," says Kettell. "It has opened up the market for industrial computing. Until recent times only a limited number of manufacturers were producing stainless steel, sealed PC terminals for use in a meat plant environment. These producers were typically also producing the software systems to run on those terminals. The issues related to heat meant these terminals tended to run with low-performance processor chips, resulting in limitations in what could actually be achieved with the software. Another issue was the cost. Due to the limited numbers in which they were produced, these terminals were sometimes prohibitively expensive.

"Today there are many manufacturers producing high-speed environmentally sealed machines with large touchscreen monitors, capable of running any software with high-quality graphics and high-speed interfaces. Because these machines are built in much larger quantities, the price has come down dramatically."

This revolution in hardware availability has also resulted in specialist software suppliers being able to supply the meat industry with what they have been lacking for many years namely state-of-the-art software that runs with the same efficiency and high availability as the software programs that are being run on office PCs.

Meat processing groups, which have experienced the old and the new technology, have tuned in to the fact that buying software and hardware from the same supplier is no longer a necessity, says Kettell. "In fact, if the hardware requirement is large enough, the savings that can be made in buying industrial PCs, printers, scanning terminals, scales and so on directly from the manufacturers can often go a long way to paying for the software they wish to run on them. If hardware is no longer the mystery it used to be, there's no longer a justification for providing profits to a middle man."

Dunbia Preston has recently undergone a complete revision of its shop floor systems, installing software from Emydex Technology to monitor production from intake to despatch. The Emydex software system roll-out coincided with a parallel roll-out of new plant hardware, including common knowledge server (CKS) terminals, and Avery scales. This included integration to high-value processing lines, incorporating fully automated weighing and box level labelling.

Dunbia IT service delivery manager for Preston Jay Adams says: "Emydex's 'open architecture' means it can integrate with any third-party hardware and, as all the integration protocols had been written before, integrating was a breeze. We're not tied down to a narrow choice of hardware; we can pick and choose the hardware configuration that best suits our requirements."

Similarly, software from pure software developers is always going to be a better choice for long-term usability, claims Kettell. Such suppliers rely on the continual updating of their offerings to make a living. In today's world there should be no place for so-called 'closed-in' software applications. There are perfectly adequate security measures built into modern off-the-shelf, industry-standard databases to enable applications from multiple authorised software suppliers to access the same data. This means that if a company's current software supplier programs are not doing the job effectively, it should be possible to purchase software from a different supplier to complement what is already in use, sharing the same database and reporting on the same data.

Another company benefiting from the increasing willingness of companies to shop around for hardware and software from different sources is Manchester-based Distec, which sells industrial data-capture products into the food sector. Phil Molloy of Distec says: "Our business really is growing significantly at the moment; processors and manufacturing companies are finding that significant savings can be made by purchasing direct, rather than buying what is usually a badged product from a systems provider."

The opening up of hardware availability has enabled software development companies such as Emydex Technology, Systems Integration and HCS Remora to rapidly grow and gain a foothold in the marketplace. Such companies have to constantly evolve and develop new software, which has to stand up and be sold on its own merits.

Most software products for the meat industry have been developed from the bottom up, being designed to operate as a low-cost stand-alone solution. These systems have typically been linked together to give central control of data and central reporting, with additional programs being added. The problem with such systems, claims Kettell, is that they are usually limited by the basic functionality of the stand-alone systems at their heart. More modern systems are built 'top down', where the most important element is communication with higher-level systems, thus ensuring common data files.

Additional functionality required from a dedicated meat plant control system is never going to be satisfied by a mass-market enterprise resource planning (ERP) or financial system, says Kettell. Such functionality includes kill line payment calculations, production yield reporting, stock management of products at individual pack/box level, carcases in chill with all the varieties of cuts available, monitoring of individual transactions, and compiling them into usable management data.

Nowadays, there should be no limits as to what data can be captured from the shop floor, by using high-power shop floor computers together with touchscreen operator interfaces.

Kettell also claims that there is no reason why all terminals and printers should not be running on either a wired or wireless ethernet connection. This leads to higher performance, greater efficiency and better manageability. Devices no longer have to be slaves to trailing cables, he says, opening up many possibilities for portable equipment in smaller multi-species kill plants, while still giving them the opportunity to invest in state-of-the-art networked equipment, rather than have to rely on small self-contained systems with limited flexibility.

However, Walsh cautions against being too ambitious with wireless systems in meat plants without first checking out that they will work properly. "Within abattoirs we've had issues with wireless," she says. "So much metalwork in the vicinity can interfere with the wireless signal."

The growing trend towards automation, underpinned by IT systems, is being driven not only by better technology, but also by environmental and economic influences. The current economic climate is putting extra pressure on producers to cut costs, with automation helping to reduce labour costs.

It is also becoming increasingly important in enabling processors to meet legislation requiring complete traceability, and in reducing a company's carbon footprint, says Rob Stephens, chief executive of Systems Integration.

St Merryn Foods, part of Vion UK, has invested in an automated, robotic warehouse with software developed by Systems Integration. The system chosen is called Integreater, an enterprise manufacturing execution system (E-MES), that is said to be the latest productivity solution for food processing businesses. It claims to offer far more functionality than a standard manufacturing execution system (MES) and, unlike most ERP software, it has been developed by food processing experts to account for all the variants and complexities specific to the industry.

The automated system has streamlined St Merryn's retail packing process, allowing the most efficient supply of raw material stock to dedicated production lines. It automates the storage and retrieval of 'work in progress' (WIP) raw material stock, enabling complete visibility and control of infeed, location and outfeed, and enables the loading and maintaining of optimum stock levels in the warehouse.

Integreater also automates the production of picking sheets, detailing the location of stock in the holding chillers. Stock is allocated to address raw material requirements outlined in daily production plans, then delivered to retail packing production lines, based on customer sales orders. Integreater also features on-line tracker and report functionality to ensure that St Merryn can monitor and manage yield, planning, production status and raw material stocks.

Save your water

Monitoring of water usage, electricity and gas use in plants can now be done on the internet through so-called resource submetering systems that utilise wireless technology.

Plants can save up to a quarter of their total water usage, for example, by installing submeters. Standard meters simply read the total volume of water used, but with the installation of electronic submeters, it is possible to assess water usage far more accurately when, where and how much of it is used.

Electronic meters take a reading from the main meter and transfer the information wirelessly to a website where managers can monitor usage in real time. It is therefore also possible to monitor usage offsite and remotely at a head office, co-ordinating readings from several plants through one website-based system.

As well as monitoring usage, the system is useful for detecting leaks and breakdowns and complying with local water use restrictions.

Submeters can be installed in all parts of a plant for example in the lairage, slaughter hall, gut room and cutting plant. It means that specific tasks can be assessed, such as how much water the overnight cleaning team use during a shift.

To enable real-time data, water meters with a pulse output must be fitted. Pulse counters are installed on each meter and they can be set to send a signal to a central web-enabled gateway after a specified number of gallons have been used.

Such systems mean that the days of a man going around a plant taking readings are numbered.

Ask the right questions

When choosing software suppliers, there are some simple questions that companies should ask, says Peter Kettell of Emydex Technology:

Is this supplier producing software purely as a means of selling its own hardware?

If this is the case and you feel that they are more concerned with the hardware, you can be certain that will be what receives the bulk of their development budget, not the software.

Is this supplier offering software that is 'open' and can run on any hardware I choose to purchase?

If this is not the case, then once again you can be sure that the software only exists in order to make the manufacturer's own hardware sellable. A purchase from this company will tie you into them, for better or for worse.

How well does the prospective supplier seem to understand your requirements?

If you have to lead the supplier along every path and tell them every turn they need to make, you should look elsewhere. It will be virtually impossible for you to tell them everything, and the things you miss they will probably miss too, which could result in a disaster when discovered after the software is implemented. The supplier you choose should be able to work with you in defining your requirements, understanding your processes and your needs. Such a supplier will only need to concentrate on what is special to you. They are likely to be one step ahead of you and make suggestions on what else you could get out of the system, if you were to do this.

Can you see the application running in a real environment?

Without a doubt the most important thing meat processors should do before making a decision on shop floor IT systems is visit one of your proposed supplier's existing users and see the application running in a real-time environment, with a significant number of transactions being made. It is easy for the software supplier to carry out demonstrations in an office environment, with a limited number of transactions. It is only when the software is seen running in a real world environment and is in constant use by the existing user that a true judgement can be made. Do not be fobbed of by 'competition' excuses. A reputable supplier should have a number of satisfied customers who will be willing to show you around their system. It may be subject to an agreement for a reciprocal visit if required, but that is only reasonable and should be accepted.

How should you assess the price of a product?

The golden rule is to get a number of quotes and to make sure that all suppliers are quoting as close as possible for the same thing. Anything that is offered as an addition by one or more suppliers should be separated out as an option. Understand exactly what is being offered, and what the short-term and long-term costs of purchasing are. Most importantly, any quote that seems too good to be true probably is. However, any quote that seems prohibitively expensive should not be discarded until you are certain it does not contain something unique that you want. All suppliers are working in the same marketplace, so if something is much more expensive there is normally a reason.

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