WO2007020661A2

WO2007020661A2 - Method and system for tracing

Info

Publication number: WO2007020661A2
Application number: PCT/IS2006/000017
Authority: WO
Inventors: Brynjolfur Thorsson; Bjorn Thorvaldsson; Asgeir Asgeirsson
Original assignee: Marel Hf.
Priority date: 2005-08-17
Filing date: 2006-08-16
Publication date: 2007-02-22
Also published as: WO2007020661A8

Abstract

The present invention discloses a method, and a system for tracing food items through a packing process, the method comprising the steps of transferring said items one-by-one from the in-feed line to the packing machine; supply said transfer means with information regarding placement of each item in the packing machine; pack said item; produce identification tag with traceable information for the packed product; attach said identification tag to the packed product; wherein the tag attached to said packed product contains information to retrieve historic information of said items.

Description

Method and system for tracing

Technical Field

The present invention relates to a method and a system for handling information in relation to food items being conveyed through packing stations. The information is used to trace the processing history of food items, including its origination and packing. The ability to trace the processing history may be used e.g. in order to trace back sources of contamination and for verification of the status and quality, weight etc. of the food. The information is furthermore useful for the control and management of the food processing plant.

Background Art

Being able to trace the origins of food products such as livestock (1), see figure 5, is desirable for many reasons. A paramount reason is when food contamination is discovered somewhere in the supply chain. The ability to catalog food products from its origin, such as mother and father of the livestock, the farm of birth (2) and the farm (3) where the livestock was raised along with such information as veterinarian services (4) and slaughterhouse can also help with maximizing yield for the farmer. Moreover, after the slaughtering of the livestock each piece of the animal can further be tracked and catalogued to produce traceable information regarding the origin of the food item as well as the process it has gone through during the processing in the processing plant (6). The sequential nature of the food processing makes it easy to keep track of this information until the final product goes through a packing process. As depict in figure 1, a shuffling of the pieces happens as the pieces arrive at the packing machine (13), sometimes from multiple processing lines (16), and are taken one-by-one and arranged into desirable batches often by manual labor(17). Therefore, the traceable information is often lost during packing, the final stage of the processing. Well known and traceable food items at the in-feed to the packing process are mingled together with other pieces as the packed product leaves the packing station (19). The finished and packed product can again be traced from the warehouse or distributor (7) to the retailers (8 and 9). This is why food needs to be recalled in such a large quantity when food contamination is discovered. Entire batches shipped from the processing plants at specific days are recalled since there is not enough traceable information to trace the contaminated food from the retailers backwards through the process in the processing plant to the source of contamination.

Applications comprising a conveyor system for meat in combination with electronic storage of information about the meat, such as information about the weight of the meat are well known in the prior art. Known systems typically comprise means for reading information from the provider of the meat, e.g. by use of a bar code reader and means for printing out the information e.g. for labeling packages with meat. The known systems are able to receive information related to a piece of meat and to pass the information along with the meat. However the known systems are adapted to convey the meat in batches so that the information about the meat is stored relative to a batch. As an example the meat from one animal or from a quarter of an animal is placed in one bin or hung on one hook. When the meat is cut into pieces these pieces are transported and stored together and in this way it is possible to trace the origination of the meat.

GB2390196 discloses a system which traces food products coming from an original source and are then distributed along a distribution channel that has a plurality of stages. The food products that are being processed may be meat-based products. The invention may also be used to track animals in a breeding program in addition to tracking animal products. At each stage, the material of the product is processed. The system comprises a storage device comprising a record created for each product at each stage and a processor operated by first and second processes. Each record comprises first stage information for identifying a first stage at which the food product is processed, first time information for specifying a time period for processing at the first stage, second stage information for identifying a second stage at which the animal product processed at the first is received as material and second time information for specifying a time period for processing at the second stage. The first process specifies a target record whose first stage and time information are coincident with that of an original product. The second process specifies one or more new target records whose first stage and time information are coincident with that of a previous target record.

NZ523322 discloses an integrated meat processing and information handling method and system for processing a meat product comprises: receiving a meat product at a receiving area; obtaining information related to the meat product and storing the information in a computer system; selecting at least one cutting rule for the meat product based on the information, wherein the at least one cutting rule is used for guidance in processing the meat product; selecting at least one processing station to process the meat product; providing the at least one processing station with the at least one cutting rule; transferring the meat product between the at least one processing station, while tracking its position; processing the meat product in terms of the at least one cutting rule into smaller meat products and transferring the smaller meat products to a packing area, while tracking their position, wherein at the packing area each of the smaller meat products is provided with at least one information related to the initial meat product.

In the prior art, methods and systems for tracing food items through processing plants take advantage of the sequential nature of food processing. However, when it comes to packaging the food products the sequential advantage is lost. Manual labor is used to transfer food items from the conveying means to the packing stations. The packing stations can have plurality of packing compartments which the laborer feeds. Therefore, the sequential order of food items arriving on the conveying means will shuffle up in the packing station. This is where the tracing information can get lost. To overcome this problem many packing stations provide a printed label with product information to put with the food product before packing. There are several problems associated with this method, labels can get mixed up, the labels easily, and it is not appetizing for the consumer to unwrap the food to be eaten and remove some label.

Disclosure of the Invention

Tracking food items is of paramount importance for the food industry as discussed in the previous section. However, the traceable information gets lost during packing of the final product due to the shuffling nature of the packing process. The present invention discloses a method and a system for tracing food items through the packing process. In amazingly simple way the problems of tracing food items and labeling packing is solved. Due to the tracing of information related to the individual pieces of meat it is possible to provide the workers with processing instructions or with support for where, when and how to place the meat in the packing machine.

In one aspect the present invention relates to a method for tracing items through a packing process, the method comprising the steps of transferring said items one-by-one from the in- feed line to the packing machine; supply said transfer means with information regarding placement of each item in the packing machine; pack said item; produce identification tag with traceable information for the packed product; attach said identification tag to the packed product; wherein the tag attached to said packed product contains information to retrieve historic information of said items.

In another aspect the present invention relates to a computer program product directly loadable into the internal memory of a digital computer, comprising software code portions for performing the method described above.

In another aspect the present invention relates to a computer program product for operating a computer, the computer program product comprising a computer readable medium; first program instruction means, recorded on said medium, for instructing a computer processor to retrieve data regarding food items arriving at said packing machine (13) from said data storage means (10); second program instruction means, recorded on said medium, for instructing a computer processor to communicate information regarding placement of said food items in specific compartments of said packing machine (13) to the control device (12); third program instruction means, recorded on said medium, for instructing a computer processor to communicate information regarding said food items in compartments of said packing machine (13) to the labeling device (18); fourth program instruction means, recorded on said medium, for instructing a computer processor to control the device attaching the label to the finished and packed product; fifth program instruction means, recorded on said medium, for instructing a computer processor to update said data storage means (10); sixth program instruction means, recorded on said medium, for instructing a computer processor to control interaction between interaction between an operator and said computer program product via human machine interface; wherein said computer program product governs the packing process by controlling through the means of hardware/software interface where each piece of product is placed in the packing machine, and the labeling process by controlling through the means of hardware/software interface on what finished packing each label is placed.

In another aspect the present invention relates to a system for tracing items through packing process, the system comprising a transfer means (17), for transferring food items (15) one- by-one from the in-feed line (16) to the packing machine (13); a computer (11); a human machine interface; a data storage means (10); a control means (12), for controlling in what compartment of the packing machine (13) each food item is placed; a label generating device (18), for generating a label referencing a record in said data storage means (10); a label attaching device (18), for attaching said generated label to the finished and packed product; wherein said label generating device and said label attaching device can be two separate devices or one and the same device.

Brief Description of Drawings Figure 1 shows a general schematic of the packing process.

Figure 2 shows a general schematic of the present invention. Figure 3 shows a schematic of one preferred embodiment of the present invention. Figure 4 shows a schematic of another preferred embodiment of the present invention. Figure 5 shows a general schematic of the overall tracing problem.

Detailed description

Prior art describes how useful traceable information can be collected during the food processing process in a processing plant. Figure 3 shows how different food items (15) point to (14) or own a corresponding record of information in a database (10). At different time and places in the life cycle of the food product, whether it is livestock, fish or any other edibles, important information is recorded. This can be for example were fish is caught, beef is born or raised, or any other quality related information such as the temperature during the severing process of the carcass, conveyors traveled in the slaughterhouse, processing line in the processing plant, and the workers handling the product. As the product travels through the food processing process new information is added at each stage. The final product finally arrives at some in-feed means (16) in the packing area where the shuffling begins. By the means of computer (11) information about every single food item arriving in the packing area is retrieved from the database (10). This information is then used by a computer program product to decide in what compartment (A-F) of the packing machine (13) each arriving food item is placed. Tracking of the individual food items (15) is independent of the transfer means (17) since the computer (11) always knows in what compartment of the packing machine (13) each food item is placed. The computer program product also controls the labeling device (18) via hardware/software interface. The labeling device (18) uses the information provided by the computer (11) to produce appropriate label referring to a record of traceable information in the database (10).

The implementations of the invention being described in the following text can obviously be varied in many ways. Such variations are not to be regarded as a departure from the spirit and scope of the present invention, and all such modifications as would be obvious to one skilled in the art are intended to be included within the scope of the following claims.

In one embodiment, the transfer means (17) is an operator as shown in figure 4. In this embodiment the control means (12) can provide visual indication for the operator, according to the instructions provided by the computer program product running on the computer (11) via hardware/software interface, by turning lights on or off representing in what compartment of the packing machine the food item should be placed. Similarly, a laser beam can be used to point to the compartment, or a monitor showing the compartments of the packing machine and highlighting the compartment which should receive the food item.

The indication could also be audible signal such as instruction to the operator communicated wirelessly to his headphones.

In another embodiment, the transfer means (17) is mechanical/electrical device. In this configuration the control device (12) can directly control the device according to the instructions provided by the computer program product running on the computer (11) via hardware/software interface.

In another embodiment, the transfer means (17) is autonomous robot. In this embodiment the robot could either receive direct information regarding where to place each food item in the packing machine from the control device (12), or retrieve by it self information about the food items arriving on the in-feed conveyor(s) from the database (10), and communicate the placement of each item to the computer (11) which in turn will command the labeling device (18) to produce a tag referring to a record with traceable information in the database (10). The robot would also update the database (10 with the placement of each food item in the packing machine (13).

Claims

Claims:

1. A method for tracing food items through a packing process, said method comprising the steps of:

- transferring said food items one-by-one from the in-feed line to the packing machine;

- supply said transfer means with information regarding placement of each food item in the packing machine;

- pack said food item;

- produce identification tag with traceable information for the food items in the packed product;

- attach said identification tag to the packed product;

wherein the tag attached to said packed product contains information to retrieve historic information of said food items.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein transferring food items one-by-one is performed by manual labor.

3. The method according to claim 1 or 2, wherein placement information for each food item is performed with visual indication.

4. The method according to claim 1 or 2, wherein placement information for each food item is performed with audible indication.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein transferring food items one-by-one is performed by autonomous robot.

6. The method according to claim 1 or 5, wherein the robot is directly supplied with placement information.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein transferring food items one-by-one is performed by mechanical/electrical device.

8. The method according to claim 1 or 7, wherein the mechanical/electrical device is directly controlled by the control means (12) to place the food items in specific compartments of the packing machine..

9. A computer program product directly loadable into the internal memory of a digital computer, comprising software code portions for:

- performing the methods according to any of claims 1 - 8,

when said product is run on a computer.

10. A computer program product for operating a computer, said computer program product comprising:

- computer readable medium;

- first program instruction means, recorded on said medium, for instructing a computer processor to retrieve data regarding food items arriving at said packing machine (13) from said data storage means (10);

- second program instruction means, recorded on said medium, for instructing a computer processor to communicate information regarding placement of said food items in specific compartments of said packing machine (13) to the control device (12);

- third program instruction means, recorded on said medium, for instructing a computer processor to communicate labeling information to the labeling device (18);

- fourth program instruction means, recorded on said medium, for instructing a computer processor to control the device attaching the label to the finished and packed product;

- fifth program instruction means, recorded on said medium, for instructing a computer processor to update said data storage means (10);

- sixth program instruction means, recorded on said medium, for instructing a computer processor to control interaction between an operator and said computer program product via human machine interface;

wherein said computer program product governs the packing process by controlling through the means of hardware/software interface where each food item is placed in the packing machine, and the labeling process by controlling through the means of hardware/software interface on what finished packing each label is placed.

11. The computer program product according to claim 9 or 10, wherein said human machine interface is a graphical user interface (GUI).

12. The computer program product according to claim 9 or 10, wherein said human machine interface is a command line interface.

13. The computer program product according to claim 9 or 10, wherein said data storage means resides on the same computer as said computing program product.

14. The computer program product according to claim 9 or 10, wherein said data storage means, and said computing program product resides on different computers.

15. The computer program product according to claim 9 or 10, wherein said data storage means is a distributed database residing on multiple interconnected computers.

16. The computer program product according to claim 15, wherein said multiple interconnected computers reside at different locations.

17. A system for tracing food items through a packing process, said system comprising:

- a transfer means (17), for transferring food items (15) one-by-one from the in-feed line (16) to the packing machine (13);

- a computer (11);

- a human machine interface;

- a data storage means (10);

- a control means (12), for controlling in what compartment of the packing machine (13) each food item is placed;

- a label generating device (18), for generating a label referencing a record in said data storage means (10);

- a label attaching device (18), for attaching said generated label to the finished and packed product;

- wherein said label generating device and said label attaching device can be two separate devices or one and the same device, and wherein said control means interacts with the transfer means.

18. The system according to claim 17, wherein said transfer means (17) for transferring food items (15) one-by-one from the in-feed line to the packing machine is manual labor.

19. The system according to claim 17, wherein said transfer means (17) for transferring food items (15) one-by-one from the in-feed line to the packing machine is an autonomous robot.

20. The system according to claim 17 or 19, wherein the robot is directly supplied with placement information.

21. The system according to claim 17, wherein said transfer means (17) for transferring food items (15) one-by-one from the in-feed line to the packing machine is mechanical/electrical device.

22. The system according to claim 17 or 21, wherein said mechanical/electrical device is directly controlled by the control means (12) to place the food items in specific compartments of the packing machine.

23. The system according to claim 17 or 18, wherein said control means (12) provides visual information regarding where to place the food items in the packing machine.

The system according to claim 17 or 18, wherein said control means (12) provides audible information regarding where to place the food items in the packing machine.