A traceability system incorporating 2D barcode and RFID technology for wheat flour mills
Wheat flour undergoes several processing steps in its transformation from raw wheat in the mill, which differentiates wheat flour from other farm products. At each step, various wheat sources are combined into one batch of wheat flour. This study primarily aimed to develop a Wheat Flour Milling Traceability System (WFMTS), incorporating 2D barcode and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, and to validate the system in a wheat flour mill in China. We designed the encoding rules for the raw material, processing and traceability batches. Labels with a Quick Response Code (QR Code) were attached to small packages of wheat flour to link them to their processing information, and RFID tags were affixed to the storage bins to record logistics information. A traceability system was developed based on batch identification and record keeping. The system was applied and supported in a wheat flour mill for one year. The WFMTS management and traceability capacity was evaluated using a contrast experiment. The experiment was divided into five parts, including raw material data recording, processing data recording, package data recording, logistics data recording and traceability query. The results show that although time consumption using WFMTS in package data recording was more than that with paper recording, WFMTS was dominant in its total time consumption: five parts were reduced by 113%, and the mean accuracy of the five parts increased by 8%. The QR Code and RFID recognition accuracy was evaluated using experiments with different reading distances. The cost and income variations in application WFMTS were analyzed based on the survey. The results show that the total cost increased by 17.2% to apply the system. Compared to the cost, the sales income increase was obvious, and it reached 32.5%. Considering the good evaluation results, the system has good application potential in medium or large wheat mill enterprises.
traceability 2d barcode rfid wheat flour supply chain