With increasing production demands relating to such areas as animal welfare, efficiency, environmental footprints and product safety, there’smounting pressure placed on food processors and companies to establish operational excellence. According to leading global fish processing machinery and solutions provider BAADER, one of the best, most progressive ways to achieve this aim is through complete product and production cycle connectivity.
To this end, offering its users complete single fish traceability, smart raw material distribution, individual fish call-outs for quality control inspections and packing to-order – all accompanied with full data and supporting images – the B’Logic manufacturing execution system (MES) developed by BAADER provides the platform through which a growing number of seafood companies are transforming the production side of their businesses.
B’Logic is a proven product and already at its second version, combining years of hands-on experience.
Utilising data integration, real-time processing line performance monitoring, quality control and controlled fish distribution in factories, not only is B’Logic enabling seafood firms to better optimise their raw materials, and to control production from fish to each final, packed fillet, it is also future-proofing production processes, explained Henning Pedersen, Managing Director/CEO at BAADER Logistix A/S.
As well as improving yield and end-product quality, the level of traceability that it incorporates can mitigate key risks, not least by allowing processors to take immediate action when intervention is required anywhere along the value chain. Meanwhile, the order processing and planning elements enable accurate order fulfilment, quality control, labelling and better inventory management.
The B’Logic solution is the ideal accompaniment for BAADER’s fish processing equipment, and a strong indicator of the company’s steady transition from machine provider to integrator and solutions on demand supplier, Pedersen told WF.
“We’ve gone from a standalone solutions provider to a wall-to-wall solutions provider,” he said. “Today, we’re supplying entire factories from the raw material intake to dispatch. They’ve been getting more and more advanced along the way, which has driven our expansion into the world of digitalisation. As part of this, the decision was taken some years ago for our machines to be like IoT [internet of things] devices – for them to be increasingly intelligent – so they can communicate upstream and downstream along the production chain and even be able to control themselves. This has been realised through BAADER´s active digitalisation strategy.
“Our B´Logic solutions allow next level processing,” Pedersen said. “It´s truly next level across all production steps – with next level traceability, next level quality control, next level production control and next level monitoring.”
‘Smart distribution’
Yield optimisation is another particularly important commercial benefit coming from the integration of B’Logic into fish processing lines. In seafood production, yield is traditionally evaluated by measuring how efficient a machine is at taking meat off the bones of a fish. But BAADER’s B´Logic software solution goes “beyond that point”, Pedersen continued.
“Our machinery is already industry-leading in efficiency. The significant difference with B’Logic is the measurements and data that can be taken out of the processing equipment that offers much more than traditional yield measurement. We call it ‘smart distribution’, where all the data points for each single fish – its composition, properties, and qualities – define its best or highest value utilisation, and ultimately which lines it can best be sent to so our customers can get the highest value out of that product.”
It can even split partially damaged fish into separate lines, so that a prime fillet can maintain its highest value while the remainder is used for a lower-value purposes.
“There are countless opportunities for value creation, all aiming towards ‘100% Fish’ usage,” Pedersen said.
To support this raw material “best-fit” strategy and to ensure what goes out the factory door is what it’s supposed to be, B’Logic attributes a small, unique QR code to each box of fish that’s processed and readied for dispatch. With this code, the supply chain instantly has a full description of its content, with full single fish traceability back to its origins, complete with data and images from each stage of production.
Essentially, this ensures the customers of these processing facilities are getting exactly what they expect to receive: For instance, that smokehouses receive the right raw materials for their operations and for which they often pay a premium.
“Again, it’s about maximising value, and enabling our customers to send the right high-quality, fully traceable products to their customers,” Pedersen said.
An additional major benefit of combining our wall-to-wall solutions with B´Logic software is a centralised factory control that can be fully managed remotely.
In this regard, Pedersen spoke of once being stuck in traffic with the CEO of a major salmon and whitefish producing company, when that executive “keenly demonstrated” how he was able to look at every detail of what’s happening in real-time on the production line at his factory in northern Norway through the B’Logic’s software on his mobile device.
Building trust
While there’s a number of different software options available on the market, the strength of B’Logic lies in BAADER’s unique DNA of being a fish processing equipment manufacturer for more than 100 years.
“Our deep and century-long knowledge of fish processing has given us a major competitive advantage in developing our B´Logic software solution as part of a fully-integrated solution.”
Having such a tight in-house link to the actual equipment and being able to capture everything that’s taking place in that equipment, brings huge benefits to B’Logic users, especially when it’s part of a fully integrated solution, said Pedersen.
“Besides significantly improving yield, throughput and efficiencies in factories and on the processing lines, valuable information from the processing side can be brought all the way back to the fishing vessel or fish farm to improve those operations as well. At the same time, it can travel forward to the end of the supply chain and give consumers full traceability – with a simple QR code scan substantiating all the claims made by food companies, retailers and supply chains.”
Furthermore, the system can also smooth the pathway towards sustainability certifications like GlobalGAP and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), by automatically pulling all of the required information needed by the standards into one centralised point.
“Trust has become a really prominent issue across all food. And being able to prove and document that immediately on request is a very valuableasset in the seafood industry – that puts customers ahead of the curve.
“At BAADER we strongly believe that the future lies in connected, fully traceable end-to-end fish and seafood supply chains that value trust above anything else,” Pedersen concluded.
