grocers ensure food safety with RFID

Minnesota family-owned grocer Lund & Byerlys has launched a passive ultra-high frequency (UHF) RFID-enabled solution to ensure product freshness and help meet food safety mandates. The retailer installed a food safety solution, from PARTECH, in all 26 of its Stores in January 2016, and says the system helps confirm that each store and every cooler meets temperature requirements of federal and local standards . The company uses the technology to track temperatures, as well as automatically log data during security checks that employees would otherwise have to do manually.

     In 2011, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) made food safety requirements more stringent than before. FSMA aims to ensure that the U.S. food supply is safe from contamination by shifting the focus from response to prevention. Most of Lunds & Byerlys and PAR's customers have implemented Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Plans (HACCP) to comply with the standards.

     Typically, food retailers must track temperatures multiple times, or at least once a day, to comply with food safety standards. The company records the temperature of food for its own temperature management purposes and provides the information to government authorities when required. If the temperature exceeds acceptable thresholds, the food may need to be discarded.

     “With the rollout and implementation of FSMA, many resources in the grocery industry have been stretched to meet compliance deadlines,” said Chris Gindorff, senior manager of quality assurance and food safety manager at Lund Food Holdings.

     Lunds & Byerlys owns 26 upscale supermarkets in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, each containing a bakery and deli. The company's core focus is on the quality of its products, the company reports, including the freshness of the food it stores, to meet the needs of its customers.

     The frequency of temperature measurements depends on the specific checkpoints that the company has established. "We typically see measurements every two hours," said John Sammon III, ParTech's senior vice president and general manager of SureCheck. Without automated systems, the process typically requires pen and paper, Sammon explained. Many food retailers simply put the Record keeping of temperature checks in adhesives.

     Last year, Lunds & Byerlys began working with ParTech to develop an automation solution that would make tracking the temperature of fresh food products more automated. ParTech's software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution includes SureCheck Advantage (SCA) units with temperature sensors and built-in card readers developed in-house. The system also comes with two types of high-frequency (HF) 13.56 MHz RFID tags - a battery-operated device with a built-in temperature sensor from Phase IV Engineering, and a passive tag with only a unique ID number.

    Once installed inside coolers and freezers, temperature sensor tags automatically capture temperatures at five-minute intervals. This data can then be retrieved using a handheld SCA device that reads each tag's ID and associated sensor data. The SCA provides an IR-based temperature sensor, tethered temperature detector, camera and RFID Reader as an all-in-one handheld device with built-in Android operating system.

     To read temperature tags, SCA is placed within a few centimeters of them to capture the reading and tag ID. Non-temperature RFID transponders (tags) can also be used as proof of location. In some cases, it is necessary to detect the internal temperature of food. To carry out such security checks, users log into the SCA and provide their identity, as well as any other information, such as the location where measurements are being taken. That user ID is then saved in the cloud along with a timestamp.

     The employee then holds the SCA unit within reading range of a passive HF SureCheck tag installed in the cooler. The tag ID is forwarded to the software via the Wi-Fi connection, which then prompts the SCA to display the user a manifest to capture specific probe-based temperatures. When he or she does so, those measurements are also automatically sent to the cloud-based software.

     “One of the key advantages of using PAR’s SureCheck Advantage system is the ability to capture the majority of the information needed and make it fully accessible within seconds, which is easy to understand,” said Gindorff.

     “The system uses a simple checklist approach to inspections,” says Sammon. “The checklist is defined based on our client’s HACCP plan, a schedule can be set and the user simply goes through the checklist.”