Founded as a subsidiary of Air France in 1971, Servair is France’s leading aviation catering company and the third largest in the world, creating, preparing and delivering meal trays to its clients' aircraft. Servair has several subsidiaries and production sites in France producing 120,000 trays every day, using 1,000 menus and 5,300 different recipes. Every minute counts for Servair. Delays, changed flights and fluctuating passenger numbers, last-minute changes as well as the draconian punctuality imposed by aviation companies are the challenges Servair has to deal with on a daily basis. All of these challenges mean that the latest, up-to-date information must be available around the clock and the IT infrastructure must be reliable.

Under these conditions, it had become increasingly difficult for Servair to continue using paper-based traceability systems to monitor products entering and leaving its production chain

To solve the problem and maximise the processing of an increasing volume of information, the company decided to implement an automated data-collection system integrated into its existing PeopleSoft management software.

All the products are identified with a barcoded label processed by a portable data entry system in order to update and monitor tasks in real time.
Each preparation phase involves the scanning of barcodes: when the raw ingredients are delivered, when they leave the stockroom, when the meals are prepared and when the trays are dressed and finally assembled for loading onto the planes.

In total, between 23,000 and 45,000 scans are performed each day, enabling the real-time monitoring of trays up to the point that they are loaded onto the plane.

Suppliers: Zetes, Intermec