Advantage Traceability Profile: Weil's Food Processing Ltd.

Traceability "A Logical Next Step" for Canning Company

Growing up with a family in the canning industry is much like growing up on a farm, says Mark Weil. "We all had to chip in," the general manager of Weil's Food Processing recalls. "That's where your work ethic is developed."

It's also how he learned the ropes of the busy potato and tomato canning business his father founded in 1978.

Located in Wheatley, Ontario in the heart of tomato-growing country, Weil's Food Processing has earned a reputation for high quality, competitive prices and first-rate service over the decades.

Today the 100,000-square-foot plant packs close to a million cases of product a year, focusing largely on private label lines for food service distributors and major grocery chains across Canada.

Mark Weil, General Manager of Weil's Food Processing Figure 1: Mark Weil, General Manager of Weil's Food Processing

Weil's Food Processing Installed:

 

  • A new, standalone server to link all computers and better manage the inventory system
  • Accpac's add-on lot tracking module
  • Barcode peripherals, an additional printer and wireless hand-held scanner

One of Weil's key jobs is to keep those customers satisfied. So when the third-party auditors sent by his customers to inspect the plant started to ask about traceability, he paid attention.

"Traceability is probably the next logical area where things are going to be improved and the bar will be raised to the next level," Weil predicts. "I think it's going to be a marketing tool/prerequisite in the future."

To stay ahead of the curve, he signed up for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs' Traceability Pilot Project, a program designed to help food growers and processors track vital information at each stage of production and distribution.

For Weil's Food Processing, that meant working with a consultant to add a lot tracking module to the company's existing financial software, switch from a paper-based inventory system to a computerized one, and add barcoding and hand-held scanning capabilities. The biggest changes took place in the shipping/receiving and packaging departments.

Now, all inputs - both the cans and the ingredients that go into them - are assigned lot numbers when they arrive at the plant, and that data is entered into the computer system. In the packaging area, the finished products are barcoded and entered into the electronic inventory system. Before being shipped to a customer, all product barcodes are scanned and the information is directly linked to the bill of lading with the customer's address.

The result is "one up and one down" traceability that meets national Can-Trace standards.

"You can take any one of those inputs and trace it back to the supplier and trace it forward through our internal lot numbering system and right to our first ship-to customer," explains Weil.

The system went fully live in fall 2008, performing well through the busy packing season that stretches from mid-August to the end of November. Already, Weil's Food Processing is reaping benefits.

"The biggest impact is I have a better control over inventory," Weil says. He can call up more detailed information on the computer, since it now tracks lots as well as individual items.

"We're finding that our inventory is a lot more accurate when we compare it against a physical count, so we have more confidence in our computerized inventory," he says.

The other major improvement is faster recall time. Customers are starting to dictate how quickly their suppliers must be able to conduct a mock recall, Weil notes - and without the Traceability program, he doubts the company would be able to meet those minimum times. Plus, thanks to the new lot numbering system, he can narrow down the recall to just the affected products.

"We can say 'here's where it went, and this many lots, and this is the code that we'd have to recall from the customers,'" he explains. "It allows us to achieve that more accurately and a lot faster."

Ultimately, Weil sees implementing traceability as a savvy move that positions the company to meet the customer demands he sees coming down the pipe. "It's really just going where I think everything's going," he says. "It's a logical next step."

Traceability brings benefits:

By implementing a traceability system, Weil's Food Processing:

  • Gained more complete product and order tracking capability
  • Improved work-in progress and finished goods inventory management
  • Improved the speed and accuracy of mock recalls

"I think traceability is going to be a marketing tool/prerequisite in the future."

- Mark Weil, General Manager of Weil's Food Processing

 

Advantage series of food safety programs logo

Funding for the Food Safety Initiative Traceability Grant Program and Pilot Project was provided under the Agriculture Policy framework, a federal-provincial-territorial initiative.

For more information:
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E-mail: advantage@ontario.ca