Meat plants bring the information highway' inside to help employees use data to boost productivity
by David R. Stone
We sometimes hear, "We're already computerized." In this day and age that's almost like saying, "We're already mechanized."
So says Christopher Kuehnel, one of several meat industry computer experts contacted for this MM&T showcase highlighting what's new in computer use. All experts listed a growing number of productivity-boosting computer applications that are being developed for all facets of the meat production line. But Kuehnel looked at the bigger picture-beyond the meat plant.
"Probably the biggest change is the realization by management that it is not implementing systems any longer just for the meat plant," says Kuehnel, who is systems analyst and R&D coordinator at the Meat Handler Co., a division of New Age Computer Systems. "[Management] realizes it exists now inside a larger, more accessible world than it had ever before, and management wants to better feel and meet its customers' needs."
The newest computer applications cited by Kuehnel include "hundreds of seemingly unrelated things, such as satellite price and news watching, controlling environmental variables, robotic control and truck dispatching."
Yet, basic meat processing operations are also gaining efficiency and productivity-thanks to computer technology.
New computer applications include:
-- Ways of placing computer systems throughout the meat plant to boost productivity.
-- Bar-code inventory control systems to track the movement of everything from raw materials to finished product.
-- In-line label printing systems.
-- Product weight control.
-- Sales support and customer service with up-to-the-minute data available to sales representatives.
-- Management reports.
-- New management systems, such as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point programs.
Computers in the freezer
Susan Caghan of Prime Pro Data says new computer applications take advantage of new technology (hardware), as well as newly written programs (software).
For example, touch screens help gloved workers in a walk-in freezer to have access to computerized data, Caghan says.
Increasing the number of "hot keys"-short-cut, programmed keys that allow users to select computer functions without typing in a string of commands-also make computers easier to use. Such keys, along with a series of menus and sub-menus that allow users to choose from the available options, are meant to make "the use of computers more intuitive, easier to grasp," Caghan says.
The goal is to "move computers into the entire plant," she adds. The result will be efficiency and cost control for all aspects of meat production.
To take full advantage of such computerization, Caghan encourages meat processing personnel to consider computer terminals like calculators. She expects this trend to accelerate through the adoption of easy-to-use devices, including hand-held units and notebook computers.
SEI, a New Orleans-based manufacturer of software systems primarily for the packing, processing and distribution industries, has installed computerized systems on meat packing floors.
"We're experimenting with some equipment and procedures," says Don Tyler, vice president of SEI. "For example, at some of our sites we have installed a meat cutting/work order system complete with a printer on the production floor. It's a very hostile environment. We're plowing new ground here to some extent."
SEI is installing a system at one packing operation which interfaces between order entry and production. This will allow customer service to quickly assess production schedules to ensure it doesn't commit to an order it may not be able to honor.
"We're trying to take our production reporting system and move it as close as possible to the person doing the work on the production floor," Tyler says. "This gives production persons more information on what needs to be done and salespeople quicker information on what has been done."
Bar codes everywhere
One of the most promising new computer applications found throughout meat plants is bar-code scanning. Many suppliers are developing systems to broaden the use of bar codes-similar to the UPC "zebra stripes" scanned at retail cash registers-as a means to automate inventory control and product tracking throughout the meat plant.
John Harris, vice president of systems sales at Accu-Sort, says a bar-code label can be computer-created and affixed to materials as they arrive at the plant, and affixed to cartons of finished products as they are packed. At each step of the production process, scanners (hand-held or stationary) can note when the product goes past, so the computer has a record of where each item is.
Benefits include:
-- Personnel can count inventory faster and more accurately using hand-held scanners instead of handwritten inventory lists.
-- Less chance for error because data is transferred electronically from the scanner to the computer rather than from a handwritten sheet.
-- Further efficiencies are achieved as the computer uses the scanned information to automatically produce product labels and invoices.
-- Because this system can get information into the computer without delay, "real time" data is available on product quantity and location. This helps management in production scheduling, and salespeople can take advantage of the data.
According to Prime Pro Data's Caghan, any sales representative with a laptop computer can use a modem to call in for the latest data on product availability, pricing and delivery dates. This allows them to provide better customer service.
For example, if there's a shortage of one product, they will be able to suggest alternatives because they will be confident that the product they suggest is immediately available. They will also be able to send in orders via modem for quicker processing.
Technology is making bar-code scanning systems faster than ever, as some meat plants adopt wireless scanners that can send data to a computer immediately without waiting for the worker to bring the scanner in for a data transfer, Caghan points out. For smaller companies, or those where product isn't likely to be ordered and produced on the same day, it remains more cost-effective to batch-load data from the scanner into the computer at the end of the production run or shift, she adds.
One of SEI's meat clients claims that incidents of mislabeled products and products with incorrect weights dropped dramatically after it installed bar coding and laser technology on its cutting-room floor.
Bar codes on cartons of finished products can have an extended use beyond the meat plant, a number of suppliers point out. Just as supermarkets demand UPC stripes on retail packages, a growing number of foodservice distributors and large institutional customers want bar codes on their products. Labels with these bar-codes are being provided by some meat companies as a "value-added" service to help these customers track the products in their warehouses.
A problem with such bar codes is that there currently is no standard-different customers use different code numbering systems. Ideally, there should be a universal system that allows anyone to use a scanner to "read" such key data as type of product, net weight, manufacturer's name, and date.
The Uniform Code Council, a Dayton, Ohio-based non-profit organization, may help the meat industry establish a standard code for the warehouse level, as it did for retail packages. Accu-Sort's Harris expects such standardization to be achieved during the next two to five years as more companies start to use the bar codes.
In-line and on-line
As more computers go on-line in meat plants, more will also go in-line, finding applications enabling them to become part of the production process. Rather than waiting until the production line stops to transfer data to the computer, new systems can interface with production equipment in motion, and may speed up lines.
One of the first such applications is in-motion weighing equipment, which weighs product on the conveyor as it is packed. The data can be used to produce a label on the spot, and is also stored in the computer for management reports on the production run.
At Accu-Sort, such in-motion weighing systems are used in medium- to large-sized meat plants, Harris says. A typical system can handle 20 to 30 units a minute; multiple in-line weighers could be used for higher volume lines, he adds.
Many of these new computer applications are already in place at the meat processing operations of Jimmy Dean Foods. Ron Songstad, director of Jimmy Dean's management information systems, says the company is working to install a large bar coding system to code cases and pallets (and meet the demands of some foodservice customers). But in Songstad's view, the biggest development is "client server technology."
Client server technology means "we take the information we gather daily and convert it to information for our users." In this case, the "clients" served by Songstad's management information systems department are not Jimmy Dean's customers, but the managers and the people under them who must act upon the company's production and sales data.
Songstad says his department maintains "a huge data warehouse" on the company's Legacy mainframe computer system, including information from order entry, payroll, accounts payable and all the other facets of the operation that are computerized, as well as the new data available from bar-code scanning.
The challenge is how to present that data in a form the managers and employees want, Songstad explains.
Previously, the management information systems department itself worked with the data to produce reports, but now Songstad estimates that some 80 percent of Jimmy Dean's work force has personal computers. These users want to be able to call up information and see it in graphs, trend lines or other formats.
Songstad says "intelligent workstations" networked into the mainframe computer allow sales and marketing personnel to get information within seconds on customers or products. And they have the data broken down by regions or time period.
"They determine what they want to see," Songstad says. "The management information systems staff is not needed to write programs." There is a "steep learning curve-like falling off a cliff"-in training computer programmers and analysts to think in terms of client server technology, Songstad adds.
The management information systems staff has developed a similar Executive Information System that concentrates on financial information, such as profitability trends in graphic form, for company executives. To accomplish this, Jimmy Dean relies on Windows software running on a variety of DOS-type personal computers.
Describing information as an "asset," Songstad says the overall goal is to make it accessible to the people who can use it, giving them "information at their fingertips."
Any new procedures that come into a meat plant are likely to be computerized, so it's no surprise that one of the newest management concepts, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point programs, is generating its own computer software.
HACCP is based on monitoring data at various critical points throughout the meat processing operation in an effort to assure product safety and quality.
A new company, Q-See Co., is marketing HACCP software that allows an operation to react quickly in case of problems, while maintaining the ongoing historical records required for HACCP. Q-See Administrator John Nelson says the system can run on a single personal computer, or on a computer network for larger companies with multiple users.
The future
Expect to see greater use of computer systems in meat processing in the future. Kuehnel of the Meat Handler Co. cites several areas.
First will be continued fine-tuning of systems already in use for accounting, order entry, payroll and cost accounting; management analysis and forecasting; collection of production data, such as carcass measurements and weights; and label printing and other aspects of production where computers can be used as a tool.
The next steps will be getting more information to people who can use it, and presenting it in formats they can grasp.
Smaller firms can also take advantage of computing power to effectively nudge larger operations in niche markets. Smaller operations will also be able to act with almost surgical precision in meeting the product needs of their customers.
More decisions will be made directly by computers, perhaps including cut/ship decisions and in-plant routing. And electronic data interchange will allow faster communication among meat companies, distributors and their customers.
On-line ordering and instant feedback will maximize shipping efficiencies and "enhance sales and customer satisfaction by reducing shorts and out-of-date products," according to Kuehnel.
There's no end to the benefits of computerizing a production floor. For example, one of SEI's clients is using its computerized production floor as a marketing tool to attract new business.
"This company is telling major foodservice distributors it can provide better-quality products because it is engineering quality and controls into its production system," Tyler points out.