Fruberica imports Spanish and Moroccan greenhouse vegetables, such as tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes and peppers. From De Lier, these products go to customers in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the world. Annually the company grows by about 10%. To continue accommodating this growth, Fruberica chose to digitize its information flows, starting with the test data. The result: speedups and more effective communication with customers.
The purchased units are delivered by truck. Immediately after unloading, they are tested on quality characteristics such as maturity, weight, colour, temperature, size and firmness. "Every shipment is different," says Managing Director Michael Holslag. "The quality varies per pallet and sometimes even per unit. For us it is of the utmost importance to ensure that the right quality products end up with the right customers. The effectiveness of delivery is a major contributor to our success. Ten years ago we were still a relatively small player in this market, but now we matter.”
The existing procedure though, continued to take its toll on the staff. Early 2012, Karel Holslag, Michael's father and advisor to the company, called on house supplier RPO ICT Solutions, to come in and consult with the team and come up with a workable alternative. It was decided to replace the existing network infrastructure as a basis for the necessary digitization.
For digitally transmitting the inspection data, the iPad was chosen as an input device. Karel Holslag : "The deciding factor was that the iPad is intuitive. Anyone can use it. In the summer of 2012 RPO developed an application for the iPad with the fourteen basic quality criteria used by Fruberica. In addition, use was made of developments made by software company Lansa. The solution consists of a server-based development environment (Long Range Server) and an App that runs on the mobile device. iOS and Android are supported by this software. Through this bridge with the back office, the data units received in the warehouse are presented in the App using Freshng software. This data is then added to the value labels, which is immediately updated in Freshng.”
Fruberica is very satisfied with the results of the project so far.
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