Nestling amidst the fertile Vale of Evesham, Kanes Foods is one of the UK's leading processors of bagged salads, vegetables and stir fry supplying some of the best known supermarkets across the country. The company was formed following the acquisition of a small Hazlewoods plant in the early nineties by Avana Foods founder, Dr John Randall. His intention was to capitalise on the then burgeoning demand for bagged salads and stir frys.
During the subsequent fifteen years, Kanes have expanded rapidly to the point where they now employ up to a thousand people across three large factories at the Middle Littleton site, with a fourth under construction. This phenomenal growth has been fuelled by an ever increasing order book coupled with their diversification into additional lines. Kanes source over 70% of their raw products from UK growers, many within the Vale of Evesham, with the balance coming in from abroad to satisfy the public's desire for year round availability of fresh produce.
Dr Randall has never been afraid to invest in automation that adds demonstrable benefits to the business. The recent investment in Chinese machinery for the production of fresh noodles demonstrates this ethos perfectly. Kanes Foods being unique in producing over a hundred tons of fresh noodles a week; a rarity in a country accustomed to its dried equivalent.
One area that had always eluded automation was quality and process control. Although stringent quality control had always been applied throughout the process, the system still generated reams of paper on a daily basis. These records had to be stored for between three and five years whilst still providing ready access in the event that they were needed. In addition to the ever increasing storage requirements, locating and extracting individual documents was overly time consuming.
Kanes approached Applied Principles in early 2007 to discuss implementing the Principles Quality Manager across their business. In additional to removing all paper from the factory floor, it's wireless architecture and rugged mobile computing devices would provide management with instant information regarding real time checks at critical control points. Non conformances would be highlighted immediately and "what to do next" instructions issued.
"Paperless quality control, with all its inherent benefits, represented a perfect extension of our drive for automation" commented Richard Leathers, Technical Auditor at Kanes Foods. "Applied Principles sold us on the concept of accountability, traceability and stability; but ultimately it was the ability to eliminate paper that was the clincher."
"We invested in both the Principles Quality Manager and the Principles Issue Manager. The investment will pay for itself in efficiencies of time and labour alone," continued Richard. "Managing audit tasking is a cinch as the software allows us to easily create our own questions and tasks for each critical control point. Historical information can be analysed and trends monitored."
"Principles Quality Manager communicates with the Hornet-I across the in-house wireless network." said JJ Kotze, Director of Applied Principles. "Audit tasks and results are passed both ways in real time and following integration work carried out by our software engineers, the system can import and export data to and from Kanes existing databases. For example, one of the tasks pulls ingredient information from their Pegasus Opera database allowing users to read the barcode or RFID and then check ingredients against the database record."
Tasks and questions are setup a simple screen and the systems 'what-if' technology means that if non conformances are detected, additional tasks and actions are given. The system will then instruct what further action should be taken and if appropriate, relevant people will be e mailed immediately. Tasks are never forgotten or skipped as the system will alert management and there's no issue with language as instructions can be issued in multi languages.
"The system was initially piloted across three lines. We wanted to ensure that staff were given time to adapt to the new technology" continued Richard, "but we quickly realised that other staff were pushing for the system to be implemented across their areas. Over the next three months we will be rolling out a further twenty hornets across all areas of the business and in addition, add a further six Principle Towers to expand our implementation of Principles Issue Manager."
"We are especially excited about the upcoming version of software that will provide online access to the system via a secure extranet. Our suppliers and customers will be able to login and view information regarding their products; amongst other things they'll be able see pictures and temperature probe readings taken by the Hornet-I at different CCPs throughout the process. This online visibility will make visits by the supermarkets much more relaxed; after all, they'll already have had visibility of everything that's going on. Likewise the growers will be able to have GPRS enabled Hornets and send information back from the field. At the end of the day they'll be able to login to the system and see what's happening to the produce that was picked a few fours before.
"We firmly believe that what we've done to date and what we'll be rolling out over the next three months will further endorse Kanes Foods position as the undisputed innovator of the industry."
Please note that at the time this Case Study was written, Richard Leathers was employed as a Technical Auditor by Kanes Food. Since then Richard has joined Applied Principles as Quality Systems Manager.