On 19 May 2021, UK-based Mettler-Toledo Product Inspection announced a strategic partnership with Evrythng, a pioneer of the product cloud. The association provides food manufacturers, retailers and brand owners with an end-to-end traceability and food production reporting solution. This will enable aggregation of product data at every point in the value chain, for visibility, validation and real-time intelligence.
Having full visibility of all product data will help to identify ingredient and packaging issues early in the manufacturing process thereby facilitating product recalls and traceability to the precise location of substandard product in the marketplace for quick retrieval. Food manufacturers can gain a robust integration between product inspection data and a cloud-based platform that provides product transparency throughout the food supply chain
The two companies, working collaboratively, are positioned to further the digitalization of the food safety landscape. The joint proposition is achieved by Mettler-Toledo’s ProdX device data management software monitoring and collecting product inspection information in real-time. The software records all inspection activity from Mettler-Toledo Product Inspection systems – notably metal detectors, x-ray inspection, check weighers, and vision inspection technologies. This data can be integrated and modeled in the Evrythng product cloud, applying a new level of data intelligence to advance audit, reporting, and food traceability use cases for multi-stakeholder groups.
GS1 Digital Link Standard
The integration between these technologies is founded in and aligned with the emerging digitalization programs from food safety bodies such as the FDA’s ‘New Era of Smarter Food Safety.’ and the GFSI’s ‘Race to the Top.’ Evrythng co-chaired the GS1 Standards Development Working Group and contributed critical intellectual property that created the GS1 Digital Link Standard. This upgrades the traditional barcode used by two million manufacturers today to make every product smartphone-interactive and web-connected.
As well as being assured that their product digitalization activities are compliant with these global standards, food manufacturers can benefit from enhanced transparency. The traceability of products manufactured can guide more informed decision-making, greater automation, and reduced operating costs.
At the heart of the Evrything product cloud, enabling this level of transparency and traceability, is the active digital identity (ADI) – a unique digital identity assigned to products at an individual product item, batch, or SKU level. The ADI ensures that data is captured and managed by Evrythng at every touchpoint throughout a product’s lifecycle.
This information can be used by food manufacturers, retailers, and food safety audit bodies to ensure compliance with food safety regulations and contract requirements, improve supply chain performance with greater agility and integrity. It can be surfaced to consumers to provide transparency with factual data.
“The digital transformation in food manufacturing is going to happen – it’s a question of when, rather than if,” said Rob Rogers, senior advisor Food Safety & Regulations of Mettler-Toledo Product Inspection. “We want to help food manufacturers embrace that transformation by making it as easy as possible for them. The two major factors they will need to address right at the outset are the gathering of manufacturing data and simply and efficiently deploying that data to improve food safety and supply chain performance. The partnership between Mettler-Toledo and Evrythng is about developing and providing a robust and proven infrastructure to handle that wealth of digital data.”
“The beauty of our partnership with Mettler-Toledo is that it will allow food manufacturers to not only extend food safety performance but also to harness digitalization as a means to really take a leap into the future,” said Niall Murphy, CEO of Evrythng. “Food safety is a critical factor for all food manufacturers. Our solution will enable them to get ahead of the curve by collecting and managing data for every individual product that comes out of their factory, in a way that is locked into already globally-accepted standards for digital track and trace.”
