# Snacks & Sweets

> Short shelf life, batch recall exposure and weight-based yield, all of which need the record made on the line.

- **Page** - https://iotready.com/industries/snacks-sweets
- **Sector** - Manufacturing
- **Solution** - [Warehouse Management](https://iotready.com/solutions/warehouse-management.md)

The recall question is always the same: which customers received material from
this lot, and can you answer within the hour. It is a data capture problem long
before it is a compliance one.

Snacks and sweets make it harder than most. Shelf life is short, so stock that
sits in the wrong place expires. Yield depends on what the raw material happens
to be that day, so the same recipe gives a different result on a humid week.
And FSSAI wants every finished batch traced back to the raw material that went
into it, which is difficult to do from a stack of production logs.

## What goes wrong

Most of it happens in the gaps between steps.

- Raw material is weighed at the gate and the number is copied to a register later.
- A batch goes onto the line and nobody writes down which sacks it used.
- The oldest finished goods are at the back of the rack, so the newest go out first.
- ERP stock is updated at the end of the shift, from memory.

Each one is small. Together they mean a recall takes days, wastage creeps up
and the books never quite match the floor.

> **Where the record gets made**
>
> Every one of those gaps closes if the record is made at the moment of the
> event, by the thing that was weighed or scanned, and not typed up afterwards.

## Compliance as a by-product

Nobody should have to prepare for an FSSAI audit. If the lot was scanned in,
issued to the batch by scan and labelled at packing, the trace already exists.

- **Forward and back.** Pick any finished lot and see the raw material batches behind it. Pick any raw material batch and see every customer it reached.
- **Hygiene checks that can't be skipped.** A scan at the workstation is part of the job, so the checklist gets done.
- **Temperature on the record.** Cooking, cooling and storage readings are logged against the batch.
- **A record with a name and a time on it.** Who did what, and when, without anyone writing it down.

## Cooking is the hard part

For sweets, time and temperature are the product. The right cook depends on how
much moisture the raw material is carrying, so a fixed recipe isn't enough.
GoDesi monitors every line live and adjusts to the moisture of the batch. A big
display on the shopfloor shows all lines at once, and the operator gets a green
or red light when a batch drifts.

## Several sites, one way of working

Factories and warehouses run the same workflows, so a new site goes live in days
and a transfer between two of them is audited at both ends. Head office sees
the same stock the floor does, as it moves.

Everything posts to your ERP as it happens. We've done this most with ERPNext,
but the point is that it stops being a job someone does at the end of the day.

## Workflow

**Receiving** - Raw material in, with the batch and the weight captured together.

1. Scan the supplier batch code on the sack or drum
2. Weigh in on the platform; record the tare and the net
3. Bind the supplier batch to an internal lot at the point of receipt
4. Post the receipt with the measured weight

**Processing** - Production, where yield is the number that pays.

1. Issue lots to the batch by scan, so genealogy is captured as it happens
2. Weigh output per batch to derive true yield against standard
3. Print and apply a lot label at the point of packing
4. Hold and release quality checks against the same lot identity

**Dispatching** - Out of the door, FEFO enforced by the system.

1. Pick to first-expiry-first-out from the scanned lot
2. Scan cartons onto the pallet and the pallet onto the vehicle
3. Capture the dispatch weight for the transporter reconciliation
4. Retain a full lot-to-customer trace for recall

## What it runs on

- [QR & Barcode Scanner](https://iotready.com/hardware/qr-fixed.md): A fixed-mount, IP68 scanner that reads every common 1D and 2D code over one RS232 cable, built for washdown lines a handheld will not survive.
- [Label Management & Printing Station](https://iotready.com/hardware/label-printer.md): Puts an existing weighing scale and an off-the-shelf barcode printer under one central label catalogue, so the price and the weight on the label are the ones the system holds today.
- [Profiler](https://iotready.com/hardware/profiler-station.md): Length, width, height and weight of a parcel, carton or freight item captured in one placement, in under two seconds.

## Proof

- [Factory operations at GoDesi](https://iotready.com/case-studies/godesi-factory-operations.md): Raw material to finished goods across several snack factories, with the cooking process itself monitored and every transaction landing in ERPNext as it happens.