MT and EVRYTHNG partner to digitalise global food safety

Global instruments manufacturer Mettler-Toledo Product Inspection (MT) has partnered with cloud-based platform EVRYTHING to further the digitalisation of global food safety.

The partnership will provide 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.

“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 to 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 being able to simply and efficiently deploy 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 joint proposition is achieved by Mettler-Toledo ProdX device data management software, which monitors and collects product inspection information in real time. The software records all inspection activity from Mettler-Toledo Product Inspection systems — notably metal detectors, X-ray inspection, checkweighers and vision inspection technologies. This data can be integrated and modelled 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.

The integration between these technologies is founded in and aligned with the emerging digitalisation 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 digitalisation activities are compliant with these global standards, food manufacturers can benefit from enhanced transparency and traceability of products manufactured, more informed decision-making, greater automation and reduced operating costs.

At the heart of the EVRYTHNG Product Cloud, enabling this level of transparency and traceability is the Active Digital Identity (ADI). The ADI assigns a unique digital identity to products in the product cloud at an individual product item, batch or SKU level. The ADI ensures that data is captured and managed by EVRYTHNG at every touch point throughout a product’s life cycle. 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, and can be surfaced to consumers to provide transparency with authentic 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 digitalisation 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.”

Mettler-Toledo Product Inspection and EVRYTHNG are hosting a joint webinar titled The Food Safety Digital Revolution on 27 May 2021. To register, visit: www.mt.com/pi-foodsafety-pr.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/vit_mar