Overview
- Food and beverage operations must embrace automated data collection like mobile barcoding in order to enhance efficiency and agility.
- The right mobile barcoding solution will help you better connect your inventory management across its lifecycle.
- Without proper employee training, even the best mobile barcoding solutions will fail.
The food and beverage industry is facing change and opportunity at a pace never seen before. From increased inventory management issues to the utilization of smart factory operations, it’s important for food and beverage operations to stay abreast of digital opportunities. Research shows that 80% of warehouse executives are planning to invest in new technology in order to keep their competitive edge.
The first step is automated data collection, especially in a warehouse setting. Embracing this type of smart technology will enhance efficiency, and traceability, and allow for better data usage.
Here are three best practices to consider when it comes to utilizing automation technology like mobile barcoding in your food and beverage company.
WATCH VIDEO: Blue Bell ice cream maker’s best practices success story »
1. Connect Your Inventory Lifecycle
Mobile barcoding allows you to track inventory throughout its lifecycle, ensuring up-to-date changes as transactions happen. This information is immediately uploaded to your ERP system, allowing your facilities to accommodate for changes as they happen.
Further, mobile barcoding and inventory management software helps you to embrace agility. From recall readiness to rapidly changing customer demands, having reliable data capture can ensure you’re prepared to pivot if needed, especially given the state of supply chains in 2022.
For instance, a manufacturer of DIY garden kits saw demand surge quickly during the pandemic. By adding in mobile inventory management, they were able to re-allocate work assignments and continue to fulfill increasing orders each day.
READ MORE: How Digital Mobile Inventory Modernizes Food Manufacturing »
2. Remember the User Behind the Technology
Mobile automation technology only works when the users embrace your chosen software. Poor user experience can limit adoption rates and even result in system failure due to user resistance.
You may have the best system out there, but if your users aren’t properly trained, they’ll find ways to work around it. Ensure you have implemented an ease of use and learning program with your mobile barcoding partner when it comes to warehouse barcode systems.
Ultimately, mobile barcoding and automated data collection allow your food and beverage operation to do their jobs quickly and efficiently. But successful implementation is a critical best practice that can not be overlooked.
3. Understand the Impact on Traceability
Real-time visibility as it relates to inventory is a critical lifeline for food and beverage companies. As the need for greater transparency arises, organizations must understand that traceability no longer exists only within their four warehouse walls. Rather, traceability must extend into the field, from production all the way to the shelf.
Smart technology integration like mobile barcoding allows employees across the organization to update essential data into business systems. By coupling handheld data collection options with field mobility solutions, food and beverage operations can connect workers in the field to those in the warehouse, all the way to delivery at the product’s destination.
The best mobile barcoding solutions will offer flexible online and offline mobility solutions, signature capture, GPS and Google Maps integration, direct store delivery, and more.
LEARN MORE: 4 Ways Mobile Barcoding Solves Food Traceability Challenges »
Find Mobile Barcoding Solutions That Will Enhance Your Operation
Smart technology integration into food and beverage operations is no longer an option, it is an absolute necessity. The value of implementing an automated technology system with mobile barcoding scanners far outweighs the cost. And the cost of not doing anything is too great to ignore.
From efficiency to traceability, digital transformation with mobile inventory solutions can ensure you’re streamlining data and moving in the direction of a stronger future.
