Track Trace
Assembly Line
🧀 Next Time You Buy Parmesan, Watch Out for the Microchip
Italian producers of parmesan cheese have been fighting against imitations for years. Now, makers of Parmigiano-Reggiano, as the original parmesan cheese is officially called, are slapping the microchips on their 90-pound cheese wheels as part of an endless cat-and-mouse game between makers of authentic and fake products.
The new silicon chips, made by Chicago-based p-Chip, use blockchain technology to authenticate data that can trace the cheese as far back as the producer of the milk used. The chips have been in advanced testing on more than 100,000 Parmigiano wheels for more than a year. The consortium of producers wants to be sure the chips can stand up to Parmigiano’s aging requirement, which is a minimum of one year and can exceed three years for some varieties.
Drugmaker Merck KGaA will soon begin using the chips, which are also being tested in the automotive industry to guarantee the authenticity of car parts. The chips could eventually be used on livestock, crops or medicine stored in liquid nitrogen.
“We don’t want to be known as the company accused of tracking people,” said Eibon. “I ate one of the chips and nobody is tracking me, except my wife, and she uses a different method.”
Automotive works on its mojo
Top of the list here is reducing transportation costs. In fact, transportation is the largest single cost in the supply chain for automotive, says Matt Bush, vice president of engineering and innovation at KPI Solutions. The challenge, he says, is to increase the density of parts and components inside the trailer. But as Freeberg points out, LIB components can easily weigh out a truck faster than it can be cubed out. The other challenge is to maximize the return ratio of collapsed containers on their trip back to the manufacturing plant, wherever that might be, says Freeberg. The standard ratio today is 3:1, reducing the number of trucks needed to return sustainable containers by two for every three shipments.
As Bush of KPI explains, it’s a continuing battle for automakers to manage the flow and relative state of assembly completion of parts and components lineside, where space is at a premium. For instance, a key question continues to be: Is it better to send kits of parts to the line or stage all inventory there for on-the-spot assembly? “The kitting process takes space but reduces the number of steps people must take along the line,” adds Bush.