The Intelleflex Perishable Produce solution provides growers, producers and co-ops with cost effective on-demand visibility for identifying, categorizing, tracking and monitoring the temperature condition of their fresh produce inventory from harvest to the retailer. Our XC3 TechnologyTM provides the ability to categorize your produce by specific product qualities (including remaining shelf life), locate the product in the warehouse, and monitor the produce temperature condition using wireless automated data collection – without the need of unpacking the pallet or unloading the trailer and requiring little to no labor. This improved visibility allows for product differentiation and value-based pricing, leading to improved product consistency, quality and sales.
The Need for On-Demand Visibility
For perishable produce, tracking inventory and managing temperature handling from the field to the grocer is critical. Tracking produce in the warehouse provides for product differentiation and tracking temperature is essential for shelf life optimization. Food packing containers can be mishandled, left on loading docks, stuck on trucks, misrouted and subjected to temperatures that negatively impact quality, shelf life and creates health risks. Legacy tracking and temperature monitoring technologies limit in-transit visibility. In-transit temperature data visibility – at the pallet level – lets you optimize the management of the remaining shelf life of your perishables and implement FEFO (First Expiry, First Out) inventory management. This maximizes the value of harvested produce by allowing you to manage shipping knowing the remaining shelf life, providing predictable product quality for consumers and increased revenue for you.
The Challenge
It’s estimated that $35 billion of perishable foods go to waste each year. Half of this shrink is temperature-related and experienced in-transit between the producer and the grocer where even a 4° F variance in storage temperature can reduce shelf life by 30%. It’s also important to track product in the event of a recall. The lack of on-demand visibility of a product’s location and condition leads to lost revenue and prevents growers and processors from implementing FEFO inventory management.
To optimize shelf life, the storage temperature of the perishables needs to be consistently and accurately monitored in-transit at the carton or pallet level. Monitoring the ambient temperature inside a trailer or warehouse is inadequate as temperatures can fluctuate significantly depending on the storage location: one pallet could be kept at the proper temperature while an adjacent pallet could be several degrees warmer or colder. And, even if the produce arrives at its destination at the proper temperature, legacy environmental monitoring systems provide no way of knowing if it has been consistently stored properly or experienced variations that impact quality, risking your reputation and revenues.
Product-level temperature monitoring must provide on-demand access of the temperature history to enable real-time management of remaining shelf life. Legacy temperature monitoring solutions require unpacking and tag retrieval to recover the temperature history which is impractical as it causes additional handling delays and modifications to existing processes.
The Solution
Intelleflex delivers the ability to track and monitor produce temperature throughout the perishable cold chain. We combine the power of our Extended Capability RFIDTM with your existing software applications to provide an integrated solution for on-demand visibility that im proves real-time decision making and helps ensure product quality.
With Intelleflex, you simply place cost-effective and re-usable temperature monitoring and location tracking tags inside each carton or pallet. Intelleflex tags feature on-board memory, for storing and easily accessing a complete temperature history of the perishables, from the field to the store. This provides the assurance that the product has been stored properly throughout shipment.
The tags can be easily read in-transit – without unpacking the carton or pallet – enabling real-time decision making. You can implement a FEFO inventory system using shelf life prediction based on the retrieved temperature history. This allows quick rerouting of products based on remaining shelf life ensuring better product quality and higher revenues.
In addition to temperature monitoring, Intelleflex tags uniquely identify produce for traceability throughout the supply chain while also providing growers and wholesalers the ability to more easily identify and manage product grading.
Intelleflex solutions are designed for the most demanding environments. Tags can be automatically and reliably read while inside packaging and are built to withstand extreme temperatures, moisture and dust conditions and have FDA compliant enclosures. Our solutions are designed to integrate with your existing applications and networks, or be used standalone without the need for complex back end systems.
Source: Intelleflex