Spanish mushroom supplier reinvigorates quality assurance with megapixel eyes

Eurochamp, a Spanish company that supplies artificially grown mushrooms (primarily champignons) to the market improved its quality assessment system by deploying a smart video surveillance system. The system based on Axxonsoft's VMS is integrated with 17 Brickcom IP cameras, three servers and three remote work stations. The installer was WAF, a longstanding Axxon partner in Spain.

Eurochamp cooperates with a group of partners who supply its products. All mushrooms from these partners are classified by quality and the suppliers are paid correspondingly, but sometimes the suppliers do not agree with the prices offered. This became an enormous headache for Eurochamp, since the company had no way to double-check what a supplier was saying. The company needed a solution for monitoring and recording product quality, checking it against the information received from suppliers.

To make the process of quality assessment for mushrooms as objective and transparent as possible, the evaluation procedure was redesigned. Previously, Eurochamp employees inspected the products without any clear instructions. New rules now took force: all actions were made in accordance with a defined protocol. The product was now weighed, after which a sample was taken for evaluation. The sample was placed in a special facility with video cameras, which recorded Eurochamp employees carefully inspecting the mushrooms. Two 5-megapixel IP cameras with different angles of view and another camera directly above the work table captured all of the process details.
 
Visual tags for digital tracking were also introduced into Eurochamp's inventory and evaluation system: now all products were given a barcode with all information about the product. The video surveillance system gained search support, so any supplier could view the evaluation process for its products and compare the actual results to the supplier's statements. The introduction of the intellect-based security and monitoring system enabled Eurochamp to substantially upgrade its quality evaluation system, smooth its supplier relationships, and make its tracking and pricing more transparent.