Salinas, Calif.-based Inteligistics has a new focus on monitoring and reducing cut-to-cool times from field to cooler.
“The time between harvest and cooling is critical to determining product quality, safety and shelf life, especially for high value, perishable crops such as berries and leafy greens,” Inteligistics CEO Gary Fleming said in a news release. “From field tickets to receiving records, most companies use a cumbersome manual process to track product before it gets into the warehouse or processing plant for pre-cooling, making it difficult to identify bottlenecks and problems.”
InteliField provides the cornerstone for Inteligistics’ cut-to-cool data collection and management, which helps manage field to cooler or processing plant shipping to optimize cut-to-cool times, the release said. Digital tickets that can be automatically created in the Inteligistics app by the driver or at a pre-configured kiosk at the facility and integrated into a customer’s enterprise resource planning or warehouse management system are just the start, the company said.
InteliField is a robust and flexible system that can incorporate multiple streams of data, the release said. Wireless trackers and a localized geo-fencing system can follow each field truck as it moves through the facility identifying patterns, bottlenecks and problems with individual loads. Adding GPS-enabled OBDII sensors tracks a truck’s minute-by-minute location from field to facility, adding critical truck maintenance information reported in real time. Additionally, time and temperature sensors attached to pallets in the field (ideally to the first and last pallet of each load) provides precise tracking of products’ environmental conditions as they move from field to cooler, the company said.
“Many companies are already collecting large amounts of data, often from manual tags or records inserted into massive spreadsheets,” said Lawrence Mallia, vice president of digital transformation at Inteligistics. “The key to using this data to quickly respond to potential problems and identify opportunities for systemic improvement is being able to instantly see the data in a way that highlights what is important. Our reports, dashboards and alerts provide invaluable, real-time insights so that the stakeholders recognize what needs immediate attention, what works, what does not work and what can be improved.”
Studies have shown that an hour of time delay in 70 F or higher can mean a day or more of shelf life lost, the release said. Inteligistics said using InteliField to gain better visibility and tracking of product can provide the data to help companies better understand their harvesting, field transport and cooler operations. This identifies problems and inconsistencies to enable companies to take actions to optimize and streamline their processes, the company said, adding that this can have a substantial effect on product freshness and quality, allowing companies to sell and deliver more product at optimal price.
From a transportation standpoint alone, tracking field truck information can help better manage dwell time, idle time and mileage, producing savings of hundreds of dollars per truck per month, according to the release. Inteligistics said the savings can be substantial for companies with dozens of trucks and thousands of loads per year.
InteliField, along with Inteligistics’ 1-Click FSMA 204 reporting and InteliView digital data platform, are part of the suite of applications developed by Inteligistics to aid and accelerate the digital transformation of agriculture. The result is access to better information and insights, leading to substantial efficiency gains, reduced waste, improved product quality and increased profits, the company said.
