• KIISE Transactions on Computing Practices
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• v.21 no.11
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• pp.689-698
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• 2015

Currently, the itemized box loading operation at the Agriculture Products Processing Center which distributes agricultural products for the region is carried out manually. The process of loading agricultural products requires great manpower and had been resolved through the part-time employment of the residents of farm villages. However, recently it has become quite difficult to secure manpower as the aging within the rural community has been intensified. Hence, the necessity for countermeasures such as facility automation or use of robots have become necessary. This study suggests an automatic robot system for the itemized loading of apple boxes at the Agriculture Products Processing Center. The suggested method is to design and develop equipment such as a conveyer, robot, and bar code reader. In addition, a sorting plan, operational control, generation of control information, and software module that could monitor the inside of the Agriculture Products Processing Center is needed. After test-operating and evaluating the developed system, the existing manual work would be replaced with the automated robot system in order to enhance work efficiency and resolve safety issues.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.392-398
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• 2009

This study identified risk factors of cross-contamination of foodborne pathogens and established a good agricultural practice (GAP) system for an agricultural products processing center (APC) for perilla leaves. All samples were collected before and after a standard work shift at the APC, while perilla leaves were also collected after each step in the APC. In addition, the workers and their surroundings were sampled by swabbing. The total plate count (TPC) and coliform count in the water samples increased significantly (p<0.05) to 3.36 and 1.73 log CFU/mL after work, respectively. However, no Escherichia coli and Listeria monocytogenes were detected. The bacterial populations of the workers and their surroundings did not differ significantly (p${\geq}$0.05) before and after work. However, Staphylococcus aureus (<1.66 log CFU) was detected at a high rate (13-50%) in the basket, packing table, gloves and cloth. Although perilla leaves passed through the washing steps, the TPC and coliform bacterial populations on the final products were higher (p${\geq}$0.05) than those of unwashed perilla leaves, which indicates that the washing system was not functioning properly. Accordingly, a GAP system with a better washing system should be employed at this facility.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.170-181
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• 2015

Generally, because individual agricultural product possesses its own distinctive characteristics and shows different characteristics at each stage of the agricultural supply chain, it is necessary to develop a proper enterprise architecture for managing information system. In this paper, we propose an enterprise architecture based on RFID/USN technology that can be used as a reference enterprise architecture for u-IT application in the agriculture sectors, which is called the u-Farm enterprise architecture with taking heterogeneous characteristics of agricultural products into account for. In addition, we also developed the RFID/USN middleware platform as a core infrastructure technology. Fo evaluation of the performance of the proposed u-Farm architecture and the RFID/USN middleware platform, the field-trial evaluation at the apple Agricultural Processing Center (APC) has been executed and the results shows that the proposed architecture and platform perform well in terms of information integration over the whole SCM process from the farming stage to delivering statge to the customers. It is expected that the proposed u-Farm enterprise architecture can be utilized as a standard information architecture, and the RFID/USN middleware platform can be a infrastructure platform for future u-IT based information technology applications and services in the agricultural environment.