Carlisle Technology Solutions

Product recalls are an unfortunate reality with much publicity. In addition to the actual handling cost of a recall, there is the hidden cost of potential brand damage. Some recent examples of significant recalls include: 

• The recent melamine pet food recall
• The 21 million pound recall of ground beef involving Canada and the US – one of the largest in US history,
• The largest meat recall ever in US history was 27.4 million pounds of fresh and frozen ready-to-eat turkey and chicken products
• The 1.1 million pounds of ground beef recalled in Pennsylvania
• The list goes on and on…

Even companies that are significantly vertically integrated are at risk via the ingredients and packaging materials they procure from others. Some firms are unable to handle the financial exposure and unfortunately pay the supreme price – they go out of business!

Carlisle understands that during these times of crisis, information is power. Immediate, reliable information can drastically limit a firm’s financial exposure. A significant differentiator of Carlisle Technology is the granularity of traceability and recall management we provide.

Recently there have been significant product recalls due to outsourced ingredients. Even when a manufacturer’s finished product meets all of the required specifications, a recall may be driven by defective packaging materials. To address this specific food industry challenge it is critical that all ingredients as well as the packaging materials are tracked.

The Symphony “Raw Materials Manager” allows tight tracking of packaging, spices, liquid ingredients, allergenic and medicinal ingredients against the finished goods lot. This ensures instantaneous backward and forward traceability of ingredients and packaging materials, thereby reducing the risk of a food recall. 

Features include:

• Interfaces to ERP Systems for Purchase Order Information
• Receiving of Dry Goods and Ingredients against Purchase Orders
• Formal Truck Approval
• HACCP Data Collection
• Inventory of Dry Goods and other Ingredients/Raw Materials
• WIP Issue towards Production Processes
• Reports
  • Trace Production Lot# Sources
  • Trace Production Lot# Derivatives
  • Trace Vendor Lot# Derivatives
  • Trace Box Sources
  • Trace Box Derivatives
  • Receiving Of Outside Purchases
  • Product Consumption
  • WIP Issue
  • Inventory and Warehousing
  • ERP Export interface

• Receiving: Of live animals, finished goods, packaging materials and processing ingredients
• Slaughterhouse: Receiving, lot scheduling, RFID carcass tracking and capture of hot/cold weights as well as flexible attribute capture for regulatory agencies, producers and processors
• Carcass Weighing: High speed dynamic weighing/tracking – via high accuracy monorail scales and Trolley Vision carcass tracking systems – up to 1,300 per hr.
• Hog Carcass Grading: High speed capture of fat probe data, veterinarian issues and visual or automated grader inspection
• Flexible Attributes: Flexible Attribute and Demerit Data Capture – user defined and assigned hot keys provide the ultimate flexibility to satisfy producer, processor and regulatory agency data capture needs
• Producer Payments: Producer payout management automatically prepares summary and detail of the captured quality data by producer and calculates payments based on flexible payment grids.
• Cooler Management: Fixed Station or portable wireless carcass grading systems improve cooler and cut floor management. Real-time cooler inventory and performance monitoring, shrinkage by cooler zone, segregation of product by type and grade
• RFID Ear Tags: Fixed Station or portable wireless Reading Solutions facilitate Carcass Tracking, online automatic beef age verification, online automatic beef tag retirement

Surprising as it may be, one of the most common reasons for product recall in North America, is related to improper labeling. Carlisle’s integrated solutions greatly reduce our clients recall risk by starting with an intelligent label design philosophy which manages label format and content, controls label deployment, provides 100% compliance verification and maximizes traceability via granular product serialization. Properly managed content, label design, and deployment along with increased traceability help to reduce our customers exposure to all of the risks associated with a product recall.

To address some of the Food Safety Challenges Facing Food Processors – we offer solutions for:

• Finished Goods Label Format & Content Management
• Tamper Proof Labeling
• Brand Protection Solutions
• Serialized Carton to Pallet Handling
• Country of Origin Labeling (COOL)
• Comprehensive Work-in-Process Tracking
• Packaging Material Consumption

Over the past 25 years Carlisle Technology has earned a solid reputation for supplying the very best integrated case weighing and labeling solutions in North America. Our NTEP approved scales are designed for both – speed and accuracy. Using only the highest grade stainless steel, sealed load cells and motors, and epoxy paint, our scales are designed to withstand the inhospitable rigors of a plant’s wash-down areas and the related chemicals.

Our completely integrated automatic box weighing and labeling solution for finished goods serialized weighing includes – our high accuracy in-motion carton scale complete with a product indexer and infeed conveyor, any one of our print and apply systems, outbound compliance verification and reject control mechanisms – are allowing our customers to increase throughput above and beyond their initial requirements.

Our Protector 5800 and 4800 wash-down rated workstations coupled with Carlisle’s exclusive OmniWeigh M5 In–Motion application software is an unbeatable combination in terms of robustness, functionality and performance. This powerful software solution is really the brain that operates the complete line and combines the functionality of SCADA, MMI and full PC workstation functionality for local reporting. A store and forward methodology is used to capture the data and forward it on to our back office data collection server running our Informer – Plant Visibility Suite. This approach allows standalone line operation independent of the server so that line performance and uptime are never compromised. Omni-Weigh can dynamically weigh, label and verify batches of production cases at extremely high production speeds.

Features Include:

• Ability to handle batch or mixed product SKU’s
• Ability to handle mixed Catch or Standard Weight Cartons
• Supports configurable set point controls for error handling and giveaway reduction
• Allows multiple label formats by product SKU
• Supports inbound scanning for mixed mode product identification
• Supports outbound scanning/verification and reject management
• Supports printing of error labels for rejected product
• Supports automatic build of cartons to pallets with full serialization
• Provides management statistics screen on system errors
• Pallet label printing on second printer
• Automated End of Day procedures – stations data is archived, complete backups are taken to the server, and the station’s production totals, overrides, counters, etc. are cleared
• Includes Hot Spare support capability

The Outbound Scanning system provides the following additional functionality:

• Scanning of UCC Finished Goods bar code labels to ensure 100% readability throughout the supply chain.
• Collection of the carton bar code data that is scanned for production counting.
• Store and forward of collected data up to the Informer system.
• Confirmation of cartons that are added to production & those cartons that are rejected

In order to efficiently manage high production volumes in multi-shift facilities with real time inventory feeds, it is critical that serialized production cartons are directed to the optimum inventory locations. Getting the cartons to the correct area quickly saves labor and allows immediate order fulfillment of perishable products, while at the same time improving customer service. This allows plant’s to capitalize on their opportunity costs and generate healthy ROI. All of this while providing product traceability that is second to none!

To address these inventory control challenges facing Food Processors – we offer solutions for:

• Product Sortation Control: Carlisle can provide integrated hardware and software solutions to manage product sortation. Through the Web based Carlisle Information Portal, users can set up designated lane #’s for each product as well as default put-away locations for each lane. A secondary lane # can also be setup for situations where the primary lane is out-of-order.
• Temporary/Alternate Lane Control: Temporary lane #’s and related locations can be setup to divert a given number of boxes to specific places to meet specific order criteria. Our Systems count down each product required in the alternate lane (with qualifying weight range) – these are automatically put-away to lane locations. Everything is recorded in our systems and whatever information is required on the label – for example – lane information and actual location – is available to be printed.
• Sortation System Integration: Our systems allow you to setup product segregation criteria, facilitate dynamic mapping of order requirements vs. actual production vs. inventory pick zones. As well, our systems allow you to manage hold codes that can be applied anywhere throughout the process.

Solutions are available for managing process inputs to outputs, including recipe control, WIP labeling, RFID WIP Labeling, management of plant yields, lot traceability and effective rework management that preserves traceability.

To address Productivity and Traceability Challenges Facing Food Processors – we offer solutions for:

• Ingredient Batching Systems
• WIP Issuances toward Production Processes
• Tracking the consumption of packaging items and other dry/wet goods ingredients by scanning them towards a line number, process number, production lot number or Work Order number, via the Symphony™ Work-in-Process Tracking Module
• Complete traceability and logging of serialized inventory issued to WIP. Who was responsible for the issuance and when the inventory was issued – is always captured
• Product or inventory issued to WIP processes can easily be returned to stock – the system will prompt operator’s for the unused portions – be it a piece count or weight – our systems manage this appropriately in regards to inventory adjustments– at the same time providing the ability to re-print inventory labels for the next time these items are issued to WIP
• Yield Reporting and monitoring of raw material inputs against finished goods by department