Mettler-Toledo, GE Form Strategic Partnership
Mettler-Toledo Product Inspection, Aurora, Ill., formed a strategic partnership with GE Intelligent Platforms, a Charlottesville, Va., division of General Electric, to offer food and beverage manufacturers optimized product safety solutions, enhancing efficiency and productivity, while ensuring compliance with food safety standards.
The new solution, GE Intelligent Platforms’ Proficy food safety software, has been pre-configured to interface with Mettler-Toledo’s technologies, collecting food safety key performance indicators (KPIs) from product inspection systems throughout the production line to be stored in one easy-access location. This enables manufacturers to view real-time data about the operational performance of their entire production process, giving them the tools to improve productivity while upholding product safety in line with guidelines such as International Featured Standards (IFS). Proficy food safety software is easy to integrate into existing manufacturing as well as product inspection systems.
In addition to real-time operational intelligence, the Proficy software combined with Mettler-Toledo’s product inspection solutions offer digitized reporting, thus eliminating the need for complex paper trails. Rich analytics and trending capabilities enable manufacturers to identify adverse trends in the performance of one part or all of their production line. It allows them to undertake corrective action prior to a problem occurring, helping to minimize maintenance downtime and costs. The system also offers exceptional levels of traceability, so that manufacturers can demonstrate due diligence in the event of a product recall.
“By partnering in this way, we at GE Intelligent Platforms, are able to combine software solutions’ expertise with those of our counterparts at Mettler-Toledo. It allows us to further support manufacturers by providing a complete holistic food safety solution, which facilitates food safety processes,” says Jeff Bartoletti, business leader, manufacturing food safety at GE Intelligent Platforms.
“As the food market becomes more and more globalized, it will become more common for manufacturers to operate multiple production lines in different countries. This poses challenges for businesses looking to optimize productivity at a local level without compromising on compliance with food safety guidelines,” says Antonio Di Maria, head of marketing for Mettler-Toledo Product Inspection. “Integrating GE Intelligent Platforms’ technology combined with ours will provide our customers with a panoramic view of their global operation. It will not only allow them to monitor product quality to help protect their brand reputation, but it will also enable them to identify the areas where efficiency can be improved. Such comprehensive monitoring is vital to ensure food manufacturers continue to meet industry challenges, operating costs and ever changing food safety standards.”