Food Safety Solutions.
WinCos.Traceability
The traceability of products today is a requirement in all areas of the food industry. Plant operators can safeguard themselves against financial damage by installing a traceability system, which reflects the process as closely as possible and is complete from end to end. Such a system must on the one hand comply with the applicable legal standards and regulations, and on the other hand offer food producers the ability of proving to their customers – on the basis of tamper-proof documentation – the origin and the production process applied.
The “WinCos.Traceability” tool integrated in the proven Buhler WinCos process control system ensures complete product traceability, measures production weights, analyzes incorporated process lines, and graphically displays the product flow from the raw material going into the process to the end product coming out of it. “The ‘WinCos.Traceability’ module records the entire production process from beginning to end and provides a straightforward, immediate overview at the click of a mouse,” explains Thomas Widmer, Head of Sales and Quotation Automation at Buhler. “It registers all production stages and every processing operation and saves the data in a central database. Its large number of detailed options such as filtering and searching enable even extensive processing chains to be displayed in a user-friendly way.”
The “WinCos.Traceability” module works from the end product back to the raw material received from suppliers and vice versa. In other words, it takes virtually no time at all to determine the input materials and their suppliers on the basis of a given end product. On the other hand, WinCos.Traceability shows which raw materials have been incorporated in which end products. This allows a detailed analysis to be obtained at the click of a mouse, clearly reveals any irregularities, and thus enables immediate and targeted intervention. The additional incorporation of identification systems such as RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) or barcodes allows the production tracing chain to be optimally supplemented. This enables additional data such as quality values and the origin of the raw materials as well as of the end products to be managed. Thanks to transparent data maintenance, the data can be linked with the relevant suppliers or customers.
