More quality and efficiency for Lutosa with the MARKEM systems

Lutosa-Van den Broeke, a Belgium company that converts potatoes into different final products (frozen fries, potato flakes,and fresh fries), uses Markem SmartDate,Cimjet and 5000 series coders for quality and efficiency in their production facility.

Lutosa-Van den Broeke is a food company that converts potatoes into different final products. The production consists mainly of frozen products (of which the majority fries), but Lutosa also produces potato flakes for mashed potatoes, a whole range of specialized products and fresh fries.

The company Lutosa is situated in Leuze-en-Hainaut, was established in 1978 and continues to grow every year. In 1988 Lutosa bought the company Primeur in St. Eloois-Vijve, which allowed them to start a second production site. What differentiates Lutosa of its competitors is the quality of the products, the optimization of the production tools and the logistic service. Lutosa is continuously searching for improvement of the performances, while respecting the environment. Lutosa invested in a purification system and uses partly green energy.

Every year 530,000 tons of potatoes are processed and converted into final products. More than 85% of the products are destined for export, with a tendency for far away countries like China, Japan and Brazil.

Jacques Tilleul is project manager at Lutosa for all projects concerning the automation and industrial computer science. He has been working for Lutosa in Leuze-en-Hainaut since 1986. “We have a dozen production lines and about 35 packaging lines. Coding has always been important for us. We use coding to provide different kinds of information: product identification, best before dates, batch numbers and barcodes. When I arrived we manually applied our codes. There were a lot of mistakes and complaints from customers. To avoid these kinds of errors, it was necessary to move to another coding method. We quickly adopted automized solutions, and created a network database. This was necessary to assure the appropriate coding on the right product, and to meet the requirements of traceability.“

“I became familiar with MARKEM via the SmartDate. At that time we were using a hot melt mechanic system for the flow packers, which also resulted in several problems. I was looking for new coding systems and the SmartDate was the only one that could do online transmission of data. The choice was quite easy, we adopted the SmartDate and continued to add more of the SmartDates to our lines.“

“Some years later we had to replace the first inkjet machines. I began to search for high definition solutions to replace the inkjet systems. I researched many different existing technologies. We were looking for a reliable system with lower maintenance and good print quality. The online communication was also a very important factor. We were immediately impressed by MARKEM's hotmelt technology. The contrast and the quality were good and since we already had the SmartDate we could easily use the same protocol that had been developed for our needs. We tested the hot melt systems and the results were very convincing. Based on the test results, we installed our first 5000 machine. We have continued to add 5000 machines to our facility and over time we plan to replace all of our old inkjet machines."

“We are very satisfied with the MARKEM machines. All of the systems were integrated to our database in 1996. When an operator launches a production the code is uploaded automatically and is updated permanently every 2 minutes for both the SmartDate and 5000 machines. This helped us improve our quality and efficiency. All the operator has to do is keeping an eye on the machines, adjusting the print heads, cleaning and purification when necessary.“

Concerning the future of coding at Lutosa, Tilleul talks especially about traceability: “With the new traceability law we are obliged to adapt our coding. We are required to put EAN 128 barcodes on our boxes and our pallets. We have to be more and more flexible, according to the wishes of the customers, who are more and more demanding. We have the ability and obligation to adapt to our customer demands. We are receiving more requests for codes in different foreign languages (Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian…) For this reason we just ordered new MARKEM print and apply machines, the Cimjet systems. Our MARKEM machines allow us to optimize our integration in one network linked to the Composer and CimControl Software. “

Tilleul already has a long experience with MARKEM. “The most remarkable of all these years of collaboration is that in 1996 we were able to network the SmartDate machines. From that time we were able to manage the machines in real time without any manual interventions. Lutosa was a pioneer in this area. From one day to the other the changes were spectacular. One day the operators were changing letters and numbers manually and the next day it was the computer that changed all the data on the production line. This was a huge progress, the beginning of intelligent coding. The beginning of a big collaboration with MARKEM.“