After two seasons of using the new ViTrax bin order management module, Fruitways business analyst Norman Lawton is thrilled about its time-saving and process control benefits. “Not only has it halved the processing time, but it has increased the integrity of batches,” he said.

Until 2019, Fruitways’ bin work order management was laboriously used in Excel with many sheets shared between various packhouse staff – often with complex formulae and slow loading times.

Enter FarSoft in 2018, who, in collaboration with Fruitways’ Group Services team, developed this additional ViTrax module, resulting in a bin work order system that runs like clockwork. Specific bins/bin groups matching certain criteria, i.e. specific grower/variety, certain coldrooms, quality parameters, storage regimes and more are carefully selected and tipped onto each production line/batch.

FarSoft director Gerhard Nel outlined the advantages of the ViTrax bin order management module as better stock control; easy and fast bin location; less risk of mixing fruit on production batches that shouldn’t be mixed such as fruit with different quality parameters or from different storage regimes; no more clunky Excel sheets; better validations in that users can’t modify bins already on work orders and various managers can’t accidentally select bins from one-another if those already are on work orders.

Norman added, “Work order process controls are imperative to our system and this module certainly provides that and more. Another major benefit is the increased visibility for everyone involved in the process.”

He concluded that Fruitways would be using this particular ViTrax module in the near future to harness future benefits for other packhouse processes.