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Food safety scares and product recalls are unfortunate facts of life in the food sector. GS1 Australia provides the standards to enable organisations to effectively keep track of where our food comes from and help implement recalls quickly and efficiently.

In China back in 2008, six babies died and thousands more became seriously ill after consuming infant formula tainted with melamine, a chemical used to make dinnerware, laminates, flooring and the like.

On top of the horrendous human cost, the scandal significantly damaged China’s food industry. Imports of Chinese dairy products were banned in many countries and, as the huge demand for Australian infant formula in China illustrates, the reputation of Chinese formula producers has yet to fully recover.

The lessons here are obvious. Food safety is the top priority for food and beverage manufacturers and recalls are to be avoided. When they do occur, they need to be implemented and resolved as quickly as possible.

In large part, this comes down to traceability.

As Peter Chambers, head of supply chain improvement services at GS1 Australia told Food & Beverage Industry News, increased consumer awareness coupled with “an ever increasing channel called the Internet” mean that traceability has become flavour of the month.

“The time is right to talk about traceability, not just in food but in all areas. Anywhere where people can get injured, get sick or die, traceability is very important,” said Chambers.

Supply chain complexity
Chambers explained that true traceability is the ultimate goal. “This involves the ability to exchange information with all the actors up and down your supply chain community. Once this occurs, information of the whereabouts of affected product can be interrogated at any time,” he said.

In the real world, however, the complexity of the food supply chain makes this difficult.

“The supply chain comprises many different stages or types of organisations (or actors) who often either distribute or manufacture product that is sold to consumers,” saidChambers.

So, when food safety issues do arise, recalls can be complicated because the products involved have been widely dispersed.

On top of that, he said, different actors use a range of processes and systems to record production information. Data capture is typically manual and either stored in private ERP systems, in spreadsheets or paper- based recording systems.

“While traceability exists, it is mostly very disjointed and requires manual intervention and interpretation of data. In the case of a recall, the process of notification, product identification and so on can take days, if not weeks,” said Chambers. “The opportunity exists to improve both the notification and recall process and reduce times and accuracy of recalled products significantly.”

Chambers also pointed out that, traditionally, there has only been limited information available from each step in the supply chain.

“We now have the ability to add event data – information starting with the transformation of raw materials and produce into commercial product and the aggregation and de-aggregation, as well as the physical whereabouts as it moves though the supply chain to point of sale,” he said.

This data includes the what, where, when and how of supply chain events. It provides visibility at each point up and down the chain.

Standards are important
“GS1 is a global standards organisation. Our role is to help companies and industries collaborate in areas where a common standard, language or solution would help every participant achieve a better outcome,” said Chambers.

“Having quality traceability and product recall capabilities are critical areas that can assist any organisation deliver product safely to consumers.”

GS1 Australia provides a range of training and education services to organisations in areas such as item identification, data capture, traceability, to name a few. The company’s GS1 system of standards provides global unique identification keys for products, locations, shipments, assets, documents and so on.

On top of that, the organisation recently released a new updated version of its Global Traceability Framework to help industries and businesses implement traceability solutions across supply chains.

“Because there are major capability and even requirement differences between sectors, we are now preparing additional sector based guidelines on how to apply the framework. For example, the fruit and vegetable sector is vastly different to beef which, in turn, is different to consumer packaged food,” said Chambers.

Recall portal
One of the key benefits of having a strong traceability system involves a company’s preparedness to conduct a product recall or withdrawal. Identification of the affected product is only one part of this process.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand’s (FSANZ) Food Industry Recall Protocol outlines the legal requirements and responsibilities of food businesses with regard to product recalls and also offers advice and assistance in this area.

In 2011, GS1 Australia launched GS1 Recall (formerly GS1 Recallnet), a portal developed in collaboration with FSANZ, as well as the Australian Food and Grocery Council, (AFGC), the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), national retailers and a number of local and international food and grocery manufacturers.

According to Chambers, the portal is a community based mechanism intended to improve the communication between the two main stakeholders in recalls, namely the initiator or sponsor of a recall or withdrawal notice and recipient organisations (wholesalers/distributors, retailers, hospital networks, etc.).

The aim of the portal is to facilitate the identification and potential quarantine of affected goods as quickly as possible. It’s the link between identifying the affected product and removing it accurately.

“We are quite excited about the growth of ‘Recall’. We have well over 600 subscribers across food and beverages, general merchandise and healthcare and that is growing at 25 per cent per annum.

“This involves many major recipients including the supermarket giants, smaller grocery providers, and hospital networks, as well as many food production and distribution companies,” said Chambers, adding that food relief organisation, Foodbank is one interesting recent addition to the portal.

New technologies
Blockchain (the technology used in the crypto-currency, Bitcoin) has been much discussed of late. Because it allows users in a network to share information without it first passing through a server, it has potential for implementation in the food supply chain.

The hope is that it will help overcome the problem of data fragmentation and provide the data integrity needed to not only carry out recalls, but also prevent fraud.

Blockchain purely addresses the security of exchange of information, particularly between anonymous parties, while GS1 is more concerned with the standardisation of information within the blockchain.

Nevertheless, recognising the importance of the technology within this space, the organisation recently announced a collaboration with IBM and Microsoft to leverage GS1 standards in their enterprise blockchain applications for supply chain clients.

There are also other new technologies on the way. For example, GS1 Australia has developed a Visibility Sandpit solution that makes it possible to trial a community- based network solution that captures traceability event data at each point in the nominated supply chain using the GS1 EPCIS standards. EPCIS (Electronic Product Code Information Services) is a GS1 standard that enables trading partners to share information about the physical movement and status of products as they travel throughout the supply chain – from business to business and ultimately to consumers. According to John Szabo, manager – consulting at GS1 Australia, this will enable communities to cost effectively evaluate what does and doesn’t work in proposed traceability solutions.

He added that the organisation also provided standards for Radio Frequency ID (RFID) technology that can help capture product IDs at each point in the supply chain without direct line of sight.

“There are developments for more commercial use of RFID in food and grocery, particularly with meat which is a high end item. The higher the value and the higher level of packaging, the more cost effective the RFID solution becomes. Active tags also enable additional data to be captured such as the temperature variances suffered en route. RFID will also help traceability solutions which tie into visibility and event data. It is much better to track and trace a product,” said Szabo.

“There are a number of ‘newer’ data carriers (bar codes) that have been introduced that allow these data carriers to include additional information such as batch numbers, expiry dates and so on. One of these barcodes, GS1 DataBar, will allow the capture of batch information at point of sale in the near future. Being trialled by major supermarket chains for use with loose fruit, this has demonstrated significant benefits over the current identification,” added Szabo.

Chambers pointed out that coordinating complex supply chains is difficult and stressed that true and effective traceability requires the full participation of everybody in the chain.

“Use of global standards facilitates that adoption but at the end of the day it comes down to the preparedness of each stakeholder to understand the change, see the benefits both for them and for the greater good, and want to participate,” he said.

Still, where this is achieved, it is now possible to cut recall notification times from days or weeks down to minutes, and more importantly, the safety of the end consumer or patient is enhanced.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Air-Conditioners Australia has released an innovative sanitary hot water solution that addresses two of the biggest issues facing manufacturers, sustainability and energy costs.

Given its use in everything from plant wash downs to pasteurisation, access to a reliable hot water supply is a must-have for many food and beverage manufacturers. The problem is, the traditional means of producing readily available water has been both expensive and environmentally unfriendly.

In response to this, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Air-Conditioners Australia (MHIAA) has released the Q-ton – a highly efficient, air-to-water hot water solution which utilises CO2 gas as a refrigerant. According to the company, the unit uses a safe, natural and environmentally responsible refrigerant. This has natural accruing properties that give the Q-ton advantages over conventional refrigerant heat pumps.

MHIAA describes it as a breakthrough in terms of both sustainability and reduced running costs.

Suitable for use by food processors, distillers and other manufacturers, the unit features a coil of cold refrigerant that absorbs heat from the outside air, as well as the world’s first two-stage compressor (combining state-of-the-art rotary and scroll technology).

A hot water solution with high efficiency rates and low carbon emissions, the Q-ton delivers outstanding performance as a solution based product. The product recovers heat energy from the air and can perform in extremely cold temperatures (down to -25°C).

“Q-ton supplies hot water from 60°C to 90°C at 100 per cent capacity at an outdoor temperature down to -7°C and will continue to produce hot water down to -25°C,” Trent Miller, Air-to-Water Manager for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Air-Conditioners Australia, told Food & Beverage Industry News.

Essentially, the pump forces air through an evaporator that contains CO2. The heat in the air is then passed through the evaporator before being absorbed by the CO2. The refrigerant is circulated in the system via the compressor causing its temperature to rise as it passes through the compressor and a heat exchanger. This heat is then transferred to the passing water before being delivered into the storage tank.

The Q-ton produces hot water at off peak electricity times and stores it in a tank for daytime use, offering a large cost saving for operators and is considered a direct replacement for boiler systems as it controls the water supply and storage temperature as well as the output capacity.

According to Miller, it offers a number of important advantages compared to the conventional alternatives.

“When you use a normal hot water solution, the conventional refrigerant can’t achieve the high temperatures of hot water. Furthermore the conventional alternatives cannot perform in lower temperatures and require the use of an electric element in heating,” he said.

Miller explained that, before the arrival of the Q-ton, there was no way for such units to manage highly compressed gasses. “The CO2 in the Q-ton has a resting temperature of about 5500 kPa while a conventional refrigerant may only have a couple of hundred. As soon as the compressor starts up, we will be getting pressures of up to 12000 kPa which is a lot of energy,” he said.

Heat pumps are rated by their Coefficient of Performance (COP), which is the ratio of the energy output over the energy input. The higher the COP ratio, the more efficient the unit. The Q-ton boasts an industry-leading COP of 4.3. According to Miller, depending on the application, that figure can be even higher.

“In a distillery in Tasmania, the Q-ton was installed instead of their originally planned electric line heater because of the projected energy savings and proven COP that the Q-ton gives. The 4.3 COP is actually a conservative estimate that is based on the standards in Japan where the ambient temperature of the water is much lower,” he said.

“In warmer climates like say Cairns, depending on the incoming water’s ambient temperature, it could require a lot less energy to heat and the COP could be a 5 or 6.”

Improved sustainability

The innovative hot water solution also offers significant environmental benefits.

“Because we are not using conventional refrigerants, we are eliminating the emission of hydrocarbons which can damage the atmosphere. This is the main reason why we should be using natural refrigerants,” said Miller. The Q-ton has been rated as having Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP) of zero.

Miller explained that, as a by-product of the refrigeration process, the unit simultaneously produces cool air. Manufacturers can take further advantage by using both to their benefit.

“If you had an abattoir you could mount the units in the cool rooms. Each unit has 20kW of cooled air. So if you had five units there’s 100kW of cold air coming off the top of it,” he said.

For example, you can produce hot water to perform plant wash downs while, at the same time, using the cooled air to refrigerate your cool areas and keep product fresh.

Safety and predictive maintenance

Miller pointed out that safety is another key selling point for the system. “The refrigerant charge is only 8.5kPa per unit which is roughly what’s in a fire extinguisher. It’s a very small charge. Safety wise, it gives businesses a lot of control over their hot water,” he said.

For example, where businesses want to reduce the chances of Legionella they need to heat water to 90°C.

“Rather than keeping everything heated to 90 degrees all the time, they can elevate the cycle, run it to that heat, and then come back down to something that’s safer to work with. Unlike a gas boiler it ramps up then ramps down. Normally people set it and forget it,” said Miller.

“We’ve got a touch screen remote or you can do it remotely through your computer and change the temperature to within 0.5 of a degree so that’s really going to change how people work with hot water.”

This remote monitoring capability, combined with inbuilt sensors within the unit, allows operators to oversee the operation of the unit system as well gather a lot of useful data such as the amount of hot water produced and energy used on a per day basis.

“With this information, customers can then have more visibility on how efficiently they are running their manufacturing processes in, let’s say, an abattoir or a dairy plant,” said Miller.

The fact they can use the data to deliver predictive maintenance programs is another reason the unit represents a step forward in heat pump technology and can help businesses looking to increase operation efficiency and improve their bottom lines.

While Miller conceded there is a competitor in this space, he pointed out that those are larger units than the Q-ton.

“We have a unit that can be modulated together. The versatility of our unit and our ability to increase the capacity size required for the job means that users have more control over the system. Other systems tend to have larger size units which do not allow for modulated flexibility within the product,” said Miller.

He explained that this, in combination with the company’s rich history in variable flow refrigerant technology (air-to-water) found in the VRF systems, gives the Q-ton system the edge in the market in providing a sanitary hot water solution to commercial spaces.

“With the Q-ton it’s not a split system, it’s all self-contained. You’ve got no one welding in the system. It’s all water in, and water out. That means we’ll get a lot longer run hours and a lot longer design life out of ours just because there’s no interaction with the refrigerant circuit from the tradesmen. It comes pre-set,” said Miller.

Despite the shutdown of the automobile industry in Australia after almost a century of car making, manufacturing is alive and well, says an industry expert.

Mr Harry Mulder, the Marketing Manager for Omron Electronics, says Australian manufacturing has been going through a significant restructure in recent years.

More manufacturers are now embracing automation and new technologies to increase productivity and improve profitability.

At a special presentation at Macquarie University in Sydney last week, Mr Mulder said manufacturing in Australia still employs nearly one million people – about 7% of the total workforce.

“It’s certainly not dead,” Mr Mulder assured students from the Faculty of Business and Economics.

“In fact, some sectors, such as food and beverage are thriving,” he said.

“The bottom line is there are many opportunities out there, particularly as markets become more global.”

But manufacturers now are facing a number of challenges, he says.

“It’s no secret that Australia, like Europe and North America, has high labour costs. And with a population of less than 25 million it is a relatively small domestic market.

“Also, manufacturers often face substantial barriers imposed by would-be trading partners including import tariffs and duties and restrictive embargoes and other restrictive practises.

“They are also faced with high shipping and transportation costs due to the long distance from major markets.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom, says Mr Mulder.

Australian manufacturers can remain competitive on the global stage by producing better quality products – and making them at less cost.

“We can achieve this through innovation and improving production lines.

“Innovation is the key – and Australian manufacturers are punching above their weight in that regard.”

Mr Mulder gave students a broad overview of the Omron Group, which employs some 36,000 people worldwide and turns over more than US$7 billion annually.

Omron, a world leader in automation, has a proud history spanning 84 years.

With its headquarters in Kyoto, Japan, the company specialises in the manufacture of automation components, equipment and systems as well as medical equipment and social systems solutions.

Since its inception Omron has achieved several significant world firsts including developing the first contact-less proximity switch to detect metallic or non-metallic objects, the ATM cash dispenser, electronic ticketing gate and traffic response electronic signalling.

Omron uses its own technology in its factories, resulting in a 15% increase in production.

Over the last 250 years, there have been four main distinct stages of manufacturing, each providing a quantum leap of improvement in methods.

The industrial “revolutions” include:

• Steam and mechanisation
• Electrification and process line
• Computerisation
• Digitisation, robotics and AI

“With the new Industrial Revolution we’ve seen an explosion of connectivity and networking,” says Mr Mulder.

“This includes connection to the Internet and the advent of Cyberphysical systems. Physical locations have become less important,” he says.

New technology including handheld computing, iPhones and tablets have been a game changer.

So how does connecting to the internet help manufacturing?

“Mainly through the storage and analysis of Big Data,” says Mr Mulder.

“This data is logged (huge files stored in the cloud) and it is analysed by computers, running 24/7 which look for anomalies.

“By monitoring and analysing equipment manufacturers can find inefficiencies and improve quality.

“AI (Artificial Intelligence) means computers thinking for themselves – and there has been much development currently in this area.”

The Internet of Things (IoT) and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) refers to devices that collect and transmit data to the internet.

According to Forbes, in 2008, there were more devices connected to the internet than there were people – and this number is rapidly rising.

And according to some estimates, the IoT will add $10-15 trillion to global GDP in the next 20 years.

“Big Data will determine how efficiently a machine operates so that anomalies can be detected which could lead to breakdowns or other problems. Preventative maintenance can then be carried out.

“It is now also used for traceability where a product can be traced throughout its supply chain, for verify its origins and authenticity.

“This helps to prevent anti-counterfeiting, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry.”

Mr Mulder admits robotics and automation will cost jobs – but these are mainly dangerous, dirty or tedious jobs which humans don’t particularly like to do.

“It will mean a reskilling – humans can use their brains to take on more meaningful jobs, requiring higher level, abstract thinking.

“The main aim is for machines to work with humans, not to make humans redundant,” he told students.

Mr Mulder said there are many opportunities still available for Australian manufacturers, but some changes in the way they think may be needed.

“Quite simply, manufacturers need to adapt and innovate in order to succeed.

“But we can expect some exciting times ahead.”