- Pressure on margins due to increased ingredient, transportation and energy costs.
- Stricter product safety requirements.
- Market pressure from lower cost retailers such as Aldi and Lidl.
- Online businesses like Amazon and Ocado investing heavily in technology.
As these factors demonstrate, it’s a difficult time to be a UK food retailer or manufacturer.
To combat these challenges, businesses are increasingly turning to trace and track technology: the ability to check and verify every aspect of your product across your entire supply chain.
It comes down to attention to detail, often touted as the difference between mediocrity and excellence. And it’s this ability to dot your i’s (or more appropriately in this instance, cross your t’s!) that’s giving food manufacturers the power to protect their brand and boost their profit margins.
Take advantage of lower prices
Often thought to be too expensive for the food industry, trace and track and serialisation have been embraced by the pharmaceutical industry.
As a result, the development of the technology and process has advanced. What’s more, the costs of implementation have been driven down to affordable levels.
So if you haven’t taken the plunge yet, now’s a great time to make an investment in trace and track technology.
Protect your brand with real-time information
Food manufacturers have traditionally relied on manual data collection methods to provide a best estimate on product tracking, with reports based on paper records kept in filing cabinets. However, label inspection systems are now delivering access to reliable real-time information.
Label inspection technology gives you the power to:
- Meet regulatory demands.
- Respond more effectively in product recall situations.
- Track products faster, more accurately, more efficiently, and more cost effectively.
- Pinpoint where products were shipped and what components were used in each product.
Put simply, 100% label inspection helps you build and protect your brand’s value while delivering a quantifiable return on investment.
Leverage the power of raw data
And the benefits don’t stop there. Raw data collected through a trace, track and serialisation system provides a complete view of the actual cost to manufacture each product by identifying the costs for each step in the production process.
Use this data to:
- Examine specific costs associated with individual products.
- Make decisions to reduce manufacturing costs.
- Systematically compare actual costs at each stage of the manufacturing process.
For example, it’s simple to analyse your waste streams to determine total cost. What’s more, you’ll also be able to compare superior production days to sub-par days, understanding differences in cost and the potential value achieved through superior performance.
Keep your SparcEye on the prize
Utilising our pharmaceutical industry expertise, we’ve developed a range of inspection technology specifically for the food industry.
Factory or retro-fitted, SparcEye allows you to:
- Inspect 100% of products in every batch.
- Collect data more effectively and with increased accuracy.
- Store data electronically in an auditable database, where it can be integrated with supply chain information.
Ultimately, if you’re looking for ways to bolster your brand’s reputation and boost your profit margins, an investment in trace and track technology ticks all the boxes. The i’s are firmly dotted and the t’s are well and truly crossed!
Want to know more about the benefits of sharing data with your customers? Read our Spotlight on quality control.
