Summary
- For us a crate on a pallet, trolley, pallet jack, or stand is normal. It is a violation only when the crate stands directly on the floor.
- The camera looks only at the "floor" zone, which is drawn on each camera. Without it, the system confused the floor with the conveyor and the tables.
- A crate put down for a moment to get a better grip does not produce an event card.
- When a person hides the support under a crate, the system marks it "undetermined" and does not guess.
- The first measurements looked good, but the test frames turned out to be too similar to the ones the rule was tuned on. So we do not quote accuracy figures until the rule has been checked on new days.
For: heads of HACCP, process engineers, and shift supervisors at food and meat processing plants
Why this is a violation at all
Order No. 590 of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food on HACCP procedures requires, in clause 2.4, that food be protected from contamination. The floor in a production area gets washed, but it is still the dirtiest surface: people walk on it and pallet jacks drive over it. A crate of raw meat placed directly on the floor carries that dirt onto the table as soon as it is lifted.
During a walkthrough this violation is easy to miss. A crate is put down "for a minute" because the pallet is taken, or the trolley has gone, and an hour later there is a whole stack around it. At the plant where we ran the system, one of the first confirmed event cards for this rule showed exactly such a stack of red crates directly on the concrete.
What we count as a violation and what we do not
| What is in the frame | System decision |
|---|---|
| A crate standing directly on the floor | Violation |
| A crate on a pallet, trolley, pallet jack, or stand | Normal |
| A crate on a conveyor or on a table | Normal, because it is outside the "floor" zone |
| The support cannot be seen because a person or another crate hides it | "Undetermined" |
| A crate put on the floor for a few seconds | No event card |
We agreed these boundaries with the head of HACCP before writing any code. If your rules are different, for example empty containers are allowed on the floor next to the washing station, this is set up with a zone or a separate exception.
How it works on a camera
On every camera that looks at the production floor, we draw a "floor" zone: the part of the frame that really is floor, without tables, conveyors, and walls. The model finds crates in the frame, and the rule considers only those inside this zone.
A crate has to stay in the zone for a certain time. This removes situations where a worker put a crate down for a moment to open a door or get a better grip. If the crate stays longer, an event card with a frame appears, and the person responsible decides whether it is a violation.
Where we got it wrong
The first version of the rule treated any place where a crate was found as floor. The result was predictable: event cards about crates on the conveyor and on tables. The head of HACCP rejected these cards, and we were wasting his time. After we added the check for the "floor" zone, this class of false event cards disappeared.
The second problem: at first the system did not see small crates well on cameras mounted high under the ceiling. We tuned it for the cameras of this particular production area, and we do the same at every new site.
We found the third mistake during validation. The first accuracy figures looked good, but the check showed that the measurement had been made on frames that were too similar, and it overstated the result. So we do not publish these figures until the rule has been tested on new days, including the hard cases: a crate on a trolley, on a pallet, right at the edge of the zone.
What the camera does not check
- What is inside the crate: product, empty containers, or waste. To the camera it is the same crate, so it matters that the zones and exceptions match your rules.
- Whether the pallet or trolley itself is clean.
- Places that no camera can see: behind a column, under a table, in a blind corner.
How to prepare if you want this rule
- Walk through the production area and note where crates most often end up on the floor. Usually these are places where pallets or trolleys are in short supply.
- Check whether at least one camera sees these places and whether a crate there is visible in the frame.
- Agree on what counts as normal: which supports are allowed, and whether there are places where empty containers may stand on the floor.
- Send us a few hours of footage from these cameras. We will draw the zones, run the footage through the system and show you the event cards it produced, including the false ones.
You can also skip the footage: we connect to the cameras you already have and start in shadow mode.
Where to apply this
- Food safety and hygiene
- Meat processing
- Video monitoring of hygiene in a meat plant: what we learned after the launch
- The log says everyone washes their hands. What cameras showed at food plants
- What video analytics costs and when it pays off