June 23, 2026

Overview
A food and beverage repackaging facility in Mexico faced a critical compliance barrier: the U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) requires rigorous allergen traceability for any product entering the American market, and the client couldn’t meet it. Their operation centered on repacking cookies produced at third-party facilities into multipack formats for U.S. distribution, but they had no reliable way to trace batch numbers, confirm production times, or verify best-before dates across the various incoming cookie varieties. Operators entered all of that information manually, creating real exposure on both the compliance and quality fronts. Having previously worked with Grantek at another food manufacturer, their project manager brought that trusted relationship to this new role and made the call.

Challenges
The core problem was one of manual dependency at every critical control point. Operators were responsible for reading and entering production details from each incoming cookie variety. This included: batch numbers, production timestamps, best-before dates, before repacking them into multipacks destined for the U.S. market. With multiple cookie types flowing through the line simultaneously, the margin for human error was significant. Best-before date verification was particularly problematic: because each cookie variety carried its own date, quality control staff had to manually cross-check every combination in a finished multipack. It was time-consuming work that pulled a skilled QC resource away from higher-value activity. Grantek identified three interlocking solutions that would collectively close the compliance gap. The first was automated label printer control, eliminating the need for operators to manually input production data. The second was a traceability engine capable of automatically calculating correct best-before dates based on the component products in each multipack. The third was Grantek’s Date Code solution; a vision system that reads the printed code and confirms it matches what was intended, giving the line a real-time quality gate before product moves further downstream. All three solutions were selected and implemented together. The integrated approach was driven by the recognition that fixing one piece of the process without the others would leave meaningful risk on the table. Cost was a factor in the evaluation, and the decision to invest across all three capabilities reflected the client’s understanding that partial compliance is no compliance. One complication emerged during implementation: the client sells into multiple North American markets, each with distinct code layout requirements for case printing. Grantek designed individualized print templates for each market variant and integrated those layouts into the vision system, so the verification logic could correctly validate against the appropriate format regardless of which market the run was destined for. The solution was built on Ignition by Inductive Automation and is fully integrated with the facility’s conveyors and packing equipment, with a foundation in place for a future SAP connection.

Solutions
With the new system live, the client now has end-to-end traceability that satisfies FSMA requirements for allergen tracking across batch numbers, production times, and best-before dates; without relying on manual data entry. The vision system provides immediate confirmation that the right information is printed on every case, and the ability to stop the line early when something is wrong means errors are caught before they compound into larger quality or recall events. On the labor side, the automated best-before calculation has freed a quality control team member from a repetitive checking task, redirecting that capacity toward work that better uses their skills. A planned SAP integration would deepen traceability further, connecting plant-floor data to enterprise systems. The client is now well-positioned to grow its U.S. market presence from a foundation of confident, verifiable compliance.