Aptean Food & Beverage Traceability:ERP The Importance of Supply Chain Visibility and the Technologies that Power It Key benefits of best practices and top ways to improve performance
Still, none of the above are as complex or important as the matter of traceability. Knowing exactly where your materials came from and where they’re headed is difficult, exacting work—but it’s far less difficult than facing the potential ramifications of not ensuring that you can trace ingredients backward and forward in the supply chain.
Food and beverage manufacturers must be masters of many domains. From new product development and highly technical processes to company culture and profitability, there’s no shortage of critical areas for businesses like yours to address, and all demand careful planning and excellent training.
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There are a number of reasons that your organisation must prioritise excellent traceability practices, as well as several ways in which complete visibility into your resources and products can pay off with better reliability and customer satisfaction. We’re also here to provide useful, proven strategies for improvement on this critical front, with each having its own unique benefits.
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1. Maintaining Compliance with Regulations and Standards
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and carrying out a withdrawal or recall › Roles
In the UK, the Food Standards Agency’s quick reference guide on traceability specifies that food business operators (FBOs) must maintain detailed information for suppliers and customers and also properly apply labels and Alsoidentifiers.criticallyimportant are the standards set by international non-profit GS1, which centre on safety and visibility. Following with these standards also ensures that your organization is in compliance with Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP), British Retail Consortium (BRC) and International Featured Standards (IFS) rules. Additional info on other traceability regulations around the world can be found in this blog post Speaking of the BRC, another well-recognised set of standards for food safety and operational controls are those established by the BRCGS Global Food Safety Standard. Adopted by over 20,000 sites in 130 countries, the standard has set the benchmark for more than 20 years, and is accepted by 70% of the top 10 global retailers and 50% of the top manufacturers. With Issue 9 published in August 2022, BRCGS sets out to provide a framework to manage product safety, integrity, legality and quality, and the operational controls for these criteria in the food and ingredient manufacturing, processing and packing industry.
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The following are the most compelling reasons to follow this guidance at your food and beverage business.
Fines and potentially worse penalties face companies that are found to be operating outside of regulations, so there’s really no excuse for not guaranteeing total compliance. Thankfully, technology like enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions make adhering to necessary standards a much simpler process with automated quality checks and on-screen alerts when anomalies are detected.
The UK Government’s “Guidance on Food Traceability, Withdrawals and Recalls within the UK Food Industry” (produced by the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland) stipulates what the law requires, how to comply with the law, best practices and what businesses need to do. Each segment of the supply chain must be able to trace all the foods received by them and supplied by them (one step back and one step forward).
on: › Traceability
Robert Oldershaw Jr., Director, Moulton Bulb
Key Reasons to Strive for Complete Traceability
“Traceability of product can now be done in a quarter of the time. The information we now have at our fingertips will help us grow the business.”
The guidance includes advice best practice systems a decision and How to inform consumers of a food recall.
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Risk Assessment
Requirements The Food Standards Agency of the UK prescribes the following steps in order to determine whether a recall is necessary: » Hazard identification: determining potential health effects associated with a particular food » Hazard characterisation: evaluating the nature of the adverse health effect » Exposure assessment: gauging the likelihood of intake of the food in question » Risk characterisation: combining the above to estimate risk and associated uncertainties
2.Ensuring Recall and Audit Readiness
“Traceability of product can now be done in a quarter of the time,” says Robert Oldershaw Jr., director for Aptean client Moulton Bulbs. “The information we now have at our fingertips will help us grow the business.”
Mistakes can happen in complicated processes, especially when a complex manufacturing process involves a large number of materials. When something does go awry—an expired ingredient is used in a batch, or a lot becomes contaminated—you need to know right away and have precise information on what went wrong, what was used and where the affected products are now. This, of course, becomes even more critical when your facilities deal with allergens. Uncompromising food safety standards should be a goal unto themselves, but 46% of all food recalls reported by the Food Standards Agency in 2020 would be classed as “never events”—easily preventable packaging and labelling mistakes that trigger an allergen related recall—there’s a clear need to put greater emphasis on proper procedures in food facilities. This makes the need for traceability even more clear, and an ERP system like Aptean Food & Beverage ERP is an excellent solution to the problem. By collecting and compiling data into a single database and updating in real-time, you always know where your resources are at any stage of the supply chain and can narrow down contamination to individual runs and lots so you know exactly what has been compromised.
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4. Protecting Reputation and Maintaining Demand
To wit, a Harris Interactive poll found that 55% of consumers would switch brands at least temporarily following a recall, while 15% said they’d never purchase the recalled product again and 21% said they’d avoid all products from the responsible brand. Food and beverage companies with superior traceability measures in place enjoy better consumer confidence and more stable operations. And with a platform like Aptean Food & Beverage ERP on your side, your organisation can have instant access to dependably accurate data that allows you to manage any concerns with agility.
Traceability features of ERP platforms also gather and maintain complete data on your ingredients, so you’ll have a better grasp of just what you have, what you need and what needs to be used next according to first-in, first-out” (FIFO) or “first-expiry, first-out” (FEFO) methodology. That, in turn, informs your purchase planning so that you can dial in and make sure you’ve got enough—but not too much—of the resources you need.
It follows logically from the previous section that a business with measures in place to limit contamination and control its negative impacts will also have less waste. Lots and runs won’t have to be scrapped due to errors in manufacture, so you’ll get more out of the raw materials you purchase as more will end up in viable products that can be sold.
3. Reducing Waste and Spoilage
Food and beverage businesses want to be in the news for some reasons—launching a popular new product or making strides in sustainability—but would certainly rather avoid the storm of negative press that comes with a recall or other food safety issue. A serious incident of that nature not only harms the organisation’s reputation, but it also dampens demand in the future.
WaystoAchieveBetterTraceability
Purpose-built ERP platforms can accommodate traceability approaches based on RFID nicely, allowing your organisation to gather and analyse tremendous amounts of information within a single, unified interface.
Automation
Barcodes and Scanners
Traceability: The Importance of Supply Chain Visibility and the Technologies that Power It
RFID Tags
QR Codes
Batch barcoding scanners offer even greater efficiency, as they compile all information scanned while in use and then transmit the data all at once when returned to their docking station. This is ideal for inventory processes, especially when a large order is received and the system needs to be updated with the associated material and product information.
Another “successor” to traditional barcodes, QR codes can capture huge amounts of information and are just as easy to scan. This technology has become especially popular with fresh produce businesses, but it can serve most any food and beverage organisation looking to improve their traceability efforts.
As with barcodes, it’s best to automate the scanning of QR codes to relieve the burden of memory and accuracy from your employees.
Aptean Food & Beverage ERP also integrates well with a number of tracing technologies that will make your processes more efficient and accurate while gathering all of the information necessary to paint a complete picture of your supply chain.
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Industry-specific ERP solutions are built to sync with smart scanners and sensors, so it makes sense to pair QR code technology with such a system.
These tried-and-true tools for quickly gathering and logging information on lots and products can still be very effective when used in conjunction with ERP technology. Just keep in mind that individual employees with scanners will be less reliable than an automated scanning process along your production line.
This has been mentioned already, but it’s critical to automate your organisation’s scanning, checking and logging processes. Not only do you reduce the risk of human error and increase efficiency, but you can more easily capture complete information, including exact dates and times of material movement, nutrient content, lot numbers for ingredients, quality assurance readings and complete finished good shipment data. Devices that use Internet of Things (IoT) technology are great for this purpose and work well with ERP platforms to keep all of your facts and figures up-to-date and easily accessible. That kind of visibility allows you to act on insights quickly, avoiding issues and capitalising on opportunities as they arise.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology can be an excellent foundation for establishing a traceability plan. The variety of tags and their applications goes beyond simply knowing what’s where—they can also be used to monitor temperature and even consumption habits.
Most food and beverage business have at least some sort of traceability approach in place, even if it’s pen and paper records or spreadsheets saved to an individual hard drive. For these organisations, the first step to improving in this area should be to eliminate these outdated methods of data capture and move to a fully digital system (like an ERP).
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To learn more about Aptean and the markets we serve, visit www.aptean.com.
Is your organisation ready to take the next step toward total traceability? Reach out to us today.
Copyright @ Aptean 2022. All rights reserved. About Aptean
Aptean is one of the world’s leading providers of purpose-built, industry-specific software that helps manufacturers and distribu tors effectively run and grow their businesses. With both cloud and on-premise deployment options, Aptean’s products, services and unmatched expertise help businesses of all sizes to be Ready for What’s Next, Now®. Aptean is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia and has offices in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
Plain and simple, food and beverage brands that make a commitment to traceability are less likely to face the potentially devastating effects of a food safety issue and have a far better understanding of their supply chain from start to finish. They also save money on what would otherwise be costly recall and withdrawal processes.
Getting on Track with Traceability
Aptean Food & Beverage ERP comes with traceability functionalities built specifically for food and beverage businesses and was designed with decades of industry experience. The solution also integrates with all manner of technologies used for bidirectional tracking of ingredients and products.
“Product withdrawals were costing us around £250,000 a year. We are now looking at a situation where we have not had any product withdrawal costs for a year, so thankfully the system has paid for itself,” says Brian Crane, dispatch manager for Aptean client and produce provider G’s.
Are You Ready to Learn More?
Interested to see how Aptean Food & Beverage ERP can help you better manage traceability at your food company? Contact us at info@aptean.com or visit www.aptean.com