Balingen, 13th May 2011 – Who is the manufacturer of this product? Where, when and under what circumstances was this product manufactured? And what are its ingredients? These are only some of the most popular questions which a new type of consumer poses to food manufacturers and retailers in reaction to food scandals such as the discovery of dioxin in eggs. Bizerba developed a standard solution enabling the food industry to make use of the benefits of mobile technologies for increased product transparency in a quick and low-cost way and without any development efforts.
In this context, the QR code - a square box with black-and-white pixels - plays an important role. This box is familiar to us from posters and magazines, and recently also from food packaging. Customers scan the box by means of the camera on their mobile phone, and are directly connected to an internet portal. Now, information about the origin and ingredients of the product are indicated on their display, optionally also recipes and additional purchase recommendations.
Bizerba developed a standard solution enabling all food manufacturers to enter this mobile world without having to invest time and money in development work.
This is how the QR code functions: Additional data regarding the product can be stored in the Bizerba labelling system by means of the _dataMaintenance.BRAIN software. This includes general information such as butcher's shops and batch numbers as well as categories such as rump steak or filet, but also further information regarding the product history such as the exact place of breeding, or dissection information. Moreover it is possible to provide the results of foreign particle inspections for superior IT systems.
"The IT sends all this bundled information to a partner company and generates a QR code with reference to the URL of this bundled information at the same time," Dieter Conzelmann, Director Industry Solutions at Bizerba explains. Manual or fully automatic labelling systems print this code onto the label and apply it to the product packaging.
The partner companies such as the online portal mynetfair administer the product information providing it online to consumers. The place of breeding, for example, may be indicated on Google maps automatically. The company also offers the appropriate mobile application, in Apple circles also known as App. This application allows the customer to scan the QR code with his mobile phone receiving all product information and graphic illustrations on his display.
This solution is shown on the Interpack 2011 in Dusseldorf from 12th to 18th May (hall 14, stand C14).
