MOBILE DATA COLLECTION FOR FOOD PRODUCTION

In this short article, we will discuss how KipTraq can be leveraged to support faster, safter and more cost-effective food production with the added advantage of making FSMA 204 compliance easy.

Background

KipTraq’s mobile data collection tool has evolved to become a versatile and user-friendly solution for various data collection across dozens of operational sites and an equally varied number of industries. Its flexibility and scalability add value to a wildly diverse array operations and improves efficiency across the board.  But we started in and one of our specialties remain food production and food processing, from farm to retailer.  Here we share some of the ways our no code/low code app can be used across multiple stages of the food production process.

Just Some of the Multiple Ways KipTraq’s Mobile Data Collection App is Used at Every Stage of Food Production

In the Field

KipTraq can be leveraged on almost any mobile device to replace any paper data collection process, with any easy to use and simple to follow set of instructions. This allows the farm to streamline and manage, food safety, quality inspections, employee trainings/tailgates, fertilizer, water, plantings, harvests, scheduled tasks, etc. while simultaneously generating the required documentation in whatever format you need.  But simply replacing paper forms with digital data collection is just beginning.  KipTraq also includes built-in applications that make enhancing your data collection simple and infinitely more powerful.  This includes:

Geo-Tagging

Useful to accurately to accurately track the location of specific types of data.  We can capture pins, paths, or even polygons (shapes).  This data can be leveraged for food safety, yield predictions, and other processes. Geo-tagging can be used to track equipment and physical assets to ensure inspections took place, and finally geo tagging can also be used to attach coordinates to visual data, such as photos taken in the field. This makes it easier to visually represent the data collected in a certain area and better understand the relationships between different data points.  KipTraq can even build interactive maps that automatically update with color coded pins, pop ups with additional details, etc.  This sort of dashboard makes it incredibly easy to visualize your data and get new insights.

Pictures

With embedded rules, inspections often mandate videos and photos.  When combined with the geo-tagging and inspections above, this allows the home office to understand and process more data faster. And with automated reporting and analysis, they can make an array of faster and more proactive business decisions around issues like yield forecasts, traceability, and food safety. 

GPS and Drop Pin Mapping

With the ability of photos, Geo-Tagging and GPS you can develop maps with pinpoint accuracy for a wide array of uses including food safety, more productive yields, increased accuracy of inspections, downstream trouble shooting and to help ensure FSMA 204 rules and traceability compliance.  It’s much easier to demonstrate this visually, so we have included this short video with several use cases.

Use Case Video – Geo-Mapping

Watch this video to learn more about all the ways you can leverage GPS, Geo-Tagging and Geo-Mapping

Receiving by The Food Manufacturer/Processing Facility 

Mobile data collection makes it easier for manufacturers to receive incoming shipments. KipTraq allows the receiver to gather information quickly and accurately about the shipment, such as its size, weight, origin, and destination.

This information can be easily accessed with our barcode reader in real-time, making it easier to accept and approve shipments. Don’t have barcodes?  You can generate them through KipTraq automatically, maybe as a last step after logging receipt of a shipment.

By having access to real-time data about incoming shipments, manufacturers can quickly identify discrepancies or issues that could affect the delivery process, allowing them to proactively address them before they become a problem. Moreover, having access to real-time data also allows the company to resolve all sorts of production issues more efficiently.

KipTraq does this by combining bar codes, printers (which we can provide) and your mobile app. Your end users can pull up a form in KipTraq on their mobile device, inspect the truck, log the PO number, scan SKUs, etc.  The form is custom-built from your requirements in a matter of minutes, with no coding required. At the end of the form, enter the number of containers and click “print”.

KipTraq can wirelessly print custom barcoded labels with whatever information you need them to contain. Label content can be customized as well, printed in different sizes, and designed to display whatever relevant information you need displayed on your raw ingredients.

So let’s use a quick example of how all this works in unison.

Say you are receiving a pallet of broccoli. You can scan the bar code for size and weight requirements. Your receiver could take some of that broccoli out from several of the pallets and inspect it for defects by pulling up broccoli specific defects within KipTraq. The receiver could also pull up photos of the expectations, log whatever defects are found that exceed whatever threshold you specify for your organization; it could red flag it or yellow flag the shipment, take additional photos and send out some emails with all the required data so that people at a higher level would compare acceptable specifications and decide whether to accept or reject the shipment. This is a process that KipTraq manages hundreds of times a day across the world.

Processing

Ingredients are turned into finished products in multiple ways.  Your mobile data collection device can be leveraged at every stage of the process as you collect, process, and share data real time on the facility floor. It’s at this stage that KipTraq not only ensures quality control and controls cost, but it also starts to become synonymous with traceability, as it allows you to track and manage the entire process from the floor through faster and smarter data collection and process tracking. You can combine bar codes with embedded rules to track your production start to finish.

As you start to produce a food product, the first step will be to assemble the ingredients.  As you start to add the ingredients you scan the bar codes again to start the creation of new product with all the recipes and ratios already in KipTraq for appropriate validation. 

If your flagship product is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and your employee is supposed to use conventional peanut butter, they might accidentally scan a barcode on a different product, say organic peanut butter or a different or almond butter. The rules embedded in KipTraq will stop the employee from continuing with the wrong ingredient, and can help ensure your employees are using the correct ingredients in the correct proportions for that particular recipe.   At each step of the process, you can add a barcode or require a check to ensure both quality and traceability.  It’s as easy as adding click on your mobile app and moving to the next step.

This is simple to do for any step in the process. You can do this:

• When you combine the two or more raw ingredients into that intermediate ingredient
• When you log
• When you chill
• When you package
• When you batch
• When you conduct any inspection (with pictures if necessary)

All your employee needs to do is follow the instructions, scan the barcode, and log the information.

The end result is your product is produced the same way, with the same quality every time, with all the appropriate data tied to the finished batches, including to the final customer shipments.

KipTraq’s process can replicate your own internal custom workflows to make it really easy to manage dozens of processes including reporting on all of this data in one place, from the first time moment raw ingredients are shipped to your facility all the way through all the intermediate steps including manufacturing until the finished goods are packed and shipped to the end customer.

Traceability

KipTraq can be and is already used by dozens of companies as an integral part of their FSMA compliance.  Here are two quick videos that explain how that works.

FSMA Compliance for Food Manufacturers

Learn how Food Manufacturers and leveraging KipTraq to optimize & gain greater control of their processes and simultaneously leveraging the same tool for FSMA Traceability compliance.

Conclusion

Our surprisingly affordable and easy to use no-code app combined with our flexible design, pre-built workflows makes it easy to get started in minutes replacing and paper, Excel spreadsheets or documented audit process in minutes.  Don’t believe us? Check out the video below on how you can get started in minutes or contact us for a custom demo and get started with a pilot process today.