Cherry Central Turns to IBM to Ensure Food Safety for Consumers

With more than six billion cases of fruits and vegetables transported around the United States each year, there are many points throughout the supply chain at which food may be exposed to possible contamination. In fact, outbreaks of illnesses traced to food carry an annual price tag of $152 billion in our country alone.

Cherry Central is collaborating with IBM using analytics technology to track food items as they travel from the farm to supermarket shelves. Employees can tell where a jar of applesauce was produced, which orchard the apples were grown in, what processing plant was used, when it was processed, what temperature it was kept at and when it was delivered to the consumer.

Workers can use mobile devices to record where food is stored and when it's moved, making communications reliable and instantaneous to notify customers on shipments and arm a small number of individuals to do a lot of complex tasks in the event of a recall.

Using IBM analytics technology, Cherry Central has improved productivity by 50 percent.

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