Achieving End-to-End Traceability & Quality Control for an Agrifood Producer

Overview

About the Client

This client operates as a regional processing and distribution firm that handles the manufacturing, packaging, and distribution of perishable items in both institutional and retail channels. With stricter regulations for product safety and retail customers demanding complete traceability records in order to be listed, the business was confronted with an urgent need to modernize its processes. Quality inspections were documented on paper, and lot numbers were recorded in spreadsheets that were not connected. Cold-chain temperature logs were kept manually at each distribution point, and there was the absence of a system that was capable of conducting a swift recall of products without the need for manual investigations.

Challenges Faced

• Lot traceability was insufficient because raw material batches were unable to be traced reliably from the process to the finished product and customer shipments, resulting in risks to liability and compliance.
• The quality records of inspections were kept using paper-based forms, which made it impossible to study patterns of defects, find suppliers that are failing, or create audit-ready quality reports in a hurry.
• Shelf-life management was handled manually for each SKU in each batch, without automatic alerts when stock is close to expiration, resulting in significant write-offs and occasionally dispatches of products that were nearing expiration.
• Temperature monitoring for cold-chains across three distribution centers relied on logs written by hand, causing gaps in the records of temperature compliance and posing a risk of regulatory non-compliance.
• A recall exercise for a product carried out as part of a retailer audit required 72 hours for completion, well beyond the timeframe of 4 hours that the majority of retail customers needed.

Recommendations by Blueflame Labs

Blueflame Labs deployed a food industry expert team for an operational and compliance review of manufacturing workflows, QC protocols, cold-chain processes, and the regulatory requirements. Our advice was to establish an ERP designed for food and beverages that includes native lot management and quality control workflows and shelf-life monitoring, supported by IoT sensor integration to ensure temperature-related compliance for cold chains. We advised removing documents based on paper QC records completely and re-establishing Inspection workflows in the ERP to produce documents that are audit-ready and digital at the time of production.

Solution Around ERP

We created an ERP for the food and beverages environment that has end-to-end lot genealogy monitoring for each batch, starting with raw material reception, through packaging, processing, and outbound delivery to the individual customer.

An electronic QC workflow was developed to collect the results of each inspection point and trigger an automated hold and release process according to pre-defined pass/fail requirements. Shelf-life management was set up for the calculation of expiry dates prior to the time of creation of the lot and to send automatic alerts 30 days, 15 days, and 7 days before expiry for all warehouse locations. IoT temperature sensors throughout the three distribution centers were integrated into the ERP through an adapted middleware layer, creating a continuous and transparent temperature log for each move of the product. A one-click recall simulation tool that is one-click was designed to facilitate the quick detection of the affected goods and customer shipments in a matter of minutes.

Implementation & Integration

The implementation of 10 months was planned in four phases: master data configuration and lot structure setup, QC workflows and shelf life management go-live, IoT cold chain integration, and recall readiness tools. Blueflame Labs managed the migration of 18 months of historic batch records in order to establish the opening lot genealogy.

The QC workflow launch required significant change management, and 45 employees from the quality and production departments were taught to transition from paper-based inspection to digital recording. This IoT integration involved the deployment as well as calibrating the temperature of 120 sensors across three locations, together with the facilities team of the client. The full simulation of recall was run in conjunction with the client’s operational and food safety teams prior to go-live, signing off to verify the 4-hour recall goal.

Result

• Reduced product recall readiness time from 72 hours to under 4 hours, meeting the compliance requirements of major retail customers and successfully passing independent food safety audits.
• Reduced QC failure rates by 38% in six months using electronic inspection records and enhanced the quality of the process and supplier analysis.  
• Completed 100% traceability coverage of production batches within 3 months after going live, eliminating previously recognized regulatory risk.
• Automated records for cold chain compliance and audit-ready reports with no gaps in temperature logs from the time of implementation.
• Zero regulatory non-compliance issues after an ERP implementation.