| Emsland Frischgeflügel Benefits
· Improved customer satisfaction
· Substantial reduction in handling time of both inbound and outbound product flow
· Elimination of shipping errors: considerable cost savings resulting from accurate order fulfillment.
· Fully automatic process traceability |
The challenge: Ensuring Shipping Accuracy and Stock Control
Emsland Frischgeflügel processes and ships more than 1.7 million fresh chickens each week. The company was aware of several on-going difficulties that adversely affected profitability. There was a real need for a review of logistic processes:
§ Shipping errors negatively affected profits
§ Handheld scanning of inbound products from production to stock, was unacceptably slow. This negatively affected delivery lead time.
§ Handheld scanning of outbound products prolonged shipping processes and failed to detect order picking errors.
The bottom line: Emsland Frischgeflügel needed an efficient automatic traceability solution. The company's management sought a faster and more accurate stock and shipping verification system, with a high degree of automation, and a support organization that appreciated – and rapidly responded to – their unique needs.
The Solution: Visidot
After a comprehensive survey, Emsland Frischgeflügel found Visidot to be the ideal solution: a fast, automated data capture system that can identify all of the items on a pallet with near 100% accuracy.
A double-sided Visidot gate was positioned next to the shrink-wrap machine, in the logistics area of the plant. Forklifts carry both inbound and outbound produce through this gate.
Multiple barcode-labeled packages are now automatically captured and decoded by Visidot Reader as soon as they leave the production line. Visidot Reader captures an overall image of a pallet and extracts the barcode data using a very rapid image processing algorithm. At the inbound scan-to-stock process, Visidot ensures comprehensive recording of all items and verification of type, production date and expiration date.
Prior to shipping to retail chains across Germany, mixed pallets are scanned at the Visidot gate. The Visidot system compares the captured data with predefined business rules: specific customer orders – received from the production system – are verified against the tag data to detect incorrect or missing items. Product weight, production and expiration dates are also verified.
When Visidot identifies an error, a real-time alert is displayed on the operator’s console, and an audio alarm is sounded. The exact location of the faulty item is highlighted on the displayed image of the pallet, enabling immediate corrective action. The whole process is completed within seconds.
Visidot also maintains an image bank with archived visual proof of delivery and asset condition, to resolve any potential delivery-related disputes.
Visidot Delivers
ImageID had the system up and running within two months subsequent to the site survey.
Visidot has given Emsland Frischgeflügel the extensive and effective traceability solution that was so essential for the improvement of its logistic processes with minimal change to their existing operations. In addition, the simplicity of system customization has given Emsland Frischgeflügel a new outlook on implementing verification processes. All of this is maintained with an across-the-board, support package provided by ImageID.
“Visidot has lived up to all of our expectations. ImageID have produced excellent results, giving us 99,5% accurate visibility of our poultry produce inventory, while eliminating outbound shipping errors.” C. Rothkötter and W. Breunig, IT managers
About Emsland Frischgeflügel GmbH
Emsland Frischgeflügel is a subsidiary of Rothkötter Kraftfutterwerk GmbH feed mill company, which was founded in 1959. The feed company annually produces 525.000 tons of feed for broilers and pigs, mainly destined for contract growers. Production is fully transparent and secure, from the parent stock farm, hatchery, broiler farms, through the slaughterhouse to the final product.
