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KAGOME, a Japanese tomato processing company established in 1899, has more than 100 years of history in the field of tomato planting and processing. Since 2010, the KAGOME Australia plant in Echuca has begun to grow and process tomatoes, supplying high-quality tomato products to food companies in Australia and other countries. It is reported that there are about 20 million people in Australia, who consume 22kg of processed tomatoes each year. As Australia has very strict requirements on the health and safety of consumers in the production and sales of food and daily necessities, quality control covers the entire process of KAGOME from tomato seed management, crop growth to product sales. Nowadays, how to automate tomato picking and processing is an urgent problem, and how to transport tomatoes from the field to the factory floor in the most efficient way is a logistics challenge. The use of SICK’s radio frequency identification (RFID) technology not only enables KAGOME to ensure product traceability, but also greatly improves the efficiency of the production process.
client needs
In Echuca’s fields, KAGOME uses 12 harvesters to pack tomatoes into more than 300 large wide-mouth boxes with a capacity of 14 tons. Each box full of fresh tomatoes was unloaded onto the mat, waiting for trucks (12 in total) to transport it to the weighbridge near the factory. It takes about 90 minutes from the field to the KAGOME factory, and each truck can transport three boxes at a time—that is, each truck can transport approximately 42 tons of tomatoes at a time.
Three years ago, there was always a long queue of trucks near the weighbridge, and the driver had to wait at least 12 minutes before getting off the truck to weigh the tomatoes. As part of the KAGOME quality control process, three samples must be taken from each box and tested in the laboratory to determine whether the tomatoes are from the KAGOME farm. In addition, the driver must prepare relevant documents to record the picking process, output and quality. This process increases the possibility of human error in the document-based quality control system, which may cause contaminated products to reach consumers, thereby greatly increasing the chance of widespread disease transmission due to food. Therefore, in order to ensure food traceability, KAGOME Australia plant began to look for a solution that can realize paperless automatic identification of weighbridges.
Find a suitable automatic identification solution
Food traceability refers to the process of tracking the history of a product and sharing this data throughout the processing process-the so-called “farm-to-table” program. Although traceability has always been the top priority of the food and beverage industry, in recent years, due to factory processing errors or the implementation of product recalls by the ANZ Food Standards Administration FSANZ, Australia’s demand for real-time food recalls is increasing. In the event of a recall, eliminating the impact as much as possible is the focus of every food manufacturer’s compensation plan. At this time, the importance of product traceability is highlighted.
An effective product tracking and tracing system includes multiple parts, the most basic of which is accurate and fast identification technology. For many years, the main force for automatic identification has been the ubiquitous barcode. Throughout the production process, the food can be identified through a unique barcode; the barcode can be affixed to the container during processing, the packaging of the finished product, the box and pallet during transportation, and the shelf in the final retail store. What KAGOME experts are looking for is a real-time automatic identification solution that can cope with harsh environments such as soil and tomato juice contamination and resistance to high temperature, wind and rain.
Use RFID technology to improve efficiency
RFID technology provides companies with a variety of ways to simplify and manage related processes, especially in terms of traceability and process reliability. RFID technology has opened up a new field for automatic data recording. It has been used in the automotive industry for many years. After an RFID tag is pasted on the car body, the data of each vehicle can be written into it by encoding. RFID tags can be read/written directly without visual contact with the tags, so they provide more functions than barcode technology. In addition, they are very strong and durable, so they can withstand harsh environmental conditions such as high temperature, dirt or humidity. With the continuous development of RFID technology and the gradual decrease in cost, its application in food tracking has become more and more extensive, and its application in large-scale raw material containers and bulk mixed materials is very common.
SICK Australia demonstrated the SICKRFU63x read/write device to KAGOME in 2012. The device can be used as an ultra-high frequency (UHF) RFID solution for tracking and tracing reusable containers, while also providing batch inspection capabilities. In addition, RFU63x can also be used as an independent working intelligent system. Its integrated functions such as data processing and filtering can ensure stable reading performance and short reading cycles.
In January 2013, KAGOME installed six SICK RFU63x devices in Echuca’s floor scale and unloading area, each equipped with three antennas to identify double-layer cargo boxes. The RFID tag fixed to the tomato container has strong tolerance and good stability, and will be used with the container since the tomato picking process, so that RFID technology can be used to avoid errors that often occur during the entry and exit of goods, such as Issues such as inaccurate quantitative and qualitative data and missing accounts. RFU63x fully meets KAGOME’s need for paperless automatic identification of tomatoes.
Application effect
RFID technology can automatically identify the source of tomatoes in real time. This eliminates the need for truck drivers to get off at the weighbridge, thereby improving their safety. At the same time, the truck spends less time on the weighbridge, shortening from the previous 12 minutes to 2 minutes, and the truck dragon phenomenon disappears. Since the operation is less time-consuming and the delivery efficiency is doubled, the truck driver can make one more trip in every 12-hour rotation. That is, assuming that the fleet has a total of 12 trucks, and each truck can load an average of 42 tons of tomatoes, the productivity can be increased by 504 tons through RFID technology.
In short, with the help of more reliable real-time data brought by SICK’s intelligent identification technology, KAGOME not only greatly improves productivity and efficiency, but also gains the ability to make the best decision.
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