Question of the week March 13, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Gatrell in question of the week.Tags: Inovis blog, logo bean, question of the week
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Since the blog’s inception in August of 2007, we have officially posted 54 questions of the week. Today, we’d like to know what’s on your mind:
What questions do you have for us?
Answer the question and we’ll send you a desk plant, the book Risk! Navigating an Uncertain World, or something else of your choosing. We look forward to hearing from you!
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Jon,
Small U.S. farmers are largely not providing to their supply chains, downstream enterprises, regulators and consumers with origin, pedigree and chain-of-custody data.
In the meantime, the U.S. is experiencing crisis after crisis – Mad cow, tainted spinach, melamine contaminations, peanut butter recalls, and more to come ….
Many say that making it mandatory for small farmers of any product supply chain to provide data relevant to public health will solve the problem but it’s more complicated than that, isn’t it?
What is Inovis doing from the standpoint of supply chain integration to address what seems to be an increasing series of food crises?
Steve,
Product genealogy is increasingly important in not just the food supply, but also for the pending Consumer Protection laws for garments and goods intended for use by children under the age of 12. The “Fresh Chain” is probably the most automated at this point, but every part of the food supply will need to support end-to-end automation and visibility.
http://blogs.inovis.com/2008/01/24/the-fresh-chain-track-and-trace-and-food-safety/
Ultimately this is an evolution for every industry and key business drivers are well known from a health and safety perspective, but the cost of management and implementation is often seen as a challenge. The initial focus of many initiatives is to send rich content in their transaction, providing they are already automated, and managed the integrity of key values as they flow from field to floor in the store. If companies don’t have capabilities, the best place to start is we core automation and having a plan to improve on the content and process controls over time.
Hopefully this helped answer and the link above shows a view of the types of things which are being seen in the space to protect the food supply.
Cheers!
~jon