Analysis of Food Inspection & Testing Laboratories’ Automation Technologies: The Case of S-Company

• Main Authors: Fang-Cheng Chang, 張芳誠
• Other Authors: 黃恆獎
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/dcxqpr

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 事業經營碩士在職學位學程 === 105 === As the people become more aware of the safety of the food they consume, a stronger emphasis has been placed on the requirements for food hygiene. Additionally, as the government has stressed food safety policies in recent years, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has required that the food manufacturing regulate the Source Management and Self-Management, and carry out post-market sampling inspections. The Source Management and Self-Management must commission inspections carried out by a third party laboratory, while post-market inspections will also be conducted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare through a third party agent. Due to the increase in inspection numbers and quality requirements, the same increase in speed, capacity, and quality from the inspection industry is strictly required. In the food industry, it is common for the environment to cause microbial contaminations. Thus, it can be expected that microbiological testing will be one of the major projects. Within the microbiological inspection process, the time required for the preparation of the culture medium along with the manpower requirement account for a large proportion. Streamlining a new inspection process, in which the quality of testing is maintained while manpower is reduced, will be a new opportunity for the future food industry to explore. Based on the results of this study, the following conclusions can be drawn: 1.Policies To cooperate with the government’s food safety policies, automatic preparation of the culture medium under the principle of high quality of inspection is necessary. Both increasing the capacity of inspection and reducing the inspection time are required in response to the large amount of food inspection from government. S Group has developed a vision and strategy for TIC (Testing, Inspection, Certification) 4.0 in order to sustain its continued growth as well as accomplish the national policy of promoting industry 4.0 (productivity 4.0). This will strengthen the competitive advantage and provide clients with better and faster services. The development of medium automation is one of the key projects. This study shows that the application of automation in large food services will provide an effective solution to the bottleneck of testing and reduce the loss of manpower. 2.Process Improvement In order to reach the goal of medium automation, the routine work of medium preparation can be replaced by machines and the manufacture is carried out by the central production center. Using economies of scale will reduce production costs while also reducing the bargaining power of suppliers. 3.Economic Benefits The establishment of MPR has reaped the following benefits: increased revenue in microbiological testing by 23.07% and a total increase in revenue of food services by 2.81%. Increasing the revenue by automating equipment to save manpower, reduce production costs, reduce supplier bargaining power, etc., will maintain and increase the competitiveness of S company Taiwan. Simply providing clients with inspection services has been unable to meet the needs of today''s customers, and the ways to provide clients with a total solution has been the trend of inspection industries. S company Taiwan provides automatic equipment for the food inspection, and our experience can be reference for other industrial companies.