By Frank Moi, CPG segment leader, East Africa, Schneider Electric.
Frank Moi.
The food and beverage (F&B) industry continues to evolve and innovate, and crucial to this is enhancing supply chain visibility, efficiency and overall business operations. As consumers become more sophisticated, they require detailed information on the raw materials that make up the goods they purchase, and whether these ingredients are produced sustainably.
Traceability allows F&B; organisations to track and trace the products as they move along the value chain (history, location, suppliers), and transparency provides full visibility on information related to the product (origin, ingredients, allergens and physical characteristics).
Traceability and transparency in the food and beverage industry are driven by:
• Product fraud (counterfeiting).
• Increased product recalls.
• Sustainability, social responsibility and a credible supply chain.
• Complex and stricter regulations and standards.
• Growing health concerns − consumers want to know the ingredients and have traceability of the products they consume.
Today, F&B; organisations benefit from systems that provide end-to-end traceability and transparency, and a holistic supply chain vision that captures and analyses data from different sources and stakeholders.
Traceability provides an important competitive advantage to manufacturers, particularly as more players enter the marketplace and customers become increasingly conscious of food safety. For example, raw materials’ traceability can be implemented, allowing companies to track their entire operations to reduce exposure in case of quality issues. Furthermore, through traceability measures, facilities can be protected against unauthorised access. In the case of finished goods, mislabelling is mitigated and serialisation improved, providing consumers with the right information.
F&B; industry players need to implement a solution that delivers an electric passport of sort; delivering traceability from farm to fork. Here, the following processes are recommended:
• First, is the upstream transparency − the process that links each product with ingredient information and the relevant certificates, and maps suppliers to the lowest level of hierarchy, such as individual farmers.
• Second is the midstream, which records the entire production process from processing, cleaning and packaging to plant traceability and genealogy.
• Third is product journey in the supply chain, from warehouses to distributors, to retailers to the end customer downstream. This includes solutions like serialisation, and track and trace solutions together with product information management (PIM).
To deliver a complete end-to-end traceability model with an electronic passport, data is required throughout the entire supply chain.
There are several compelling traceability solutions, specifically designed with the F&B; industry in mind. At Schneider Electric, our EcoStruxure Traceability Advisor architecture enables manufacturers to track the journey of ingredients from the farm to distribution. This solution provides a suite of flexible and scalable options to suit their needs.
Benefits of implementing this solution include:
• Improvement in business performance.
• Protection of brand.
• Enhanced risk management.
• Creation of competitive advantage.
• Full visibility of the value chain.
• Differentiation and better connection with consumers.
Our holistic view, provided by EcoStruxure Traceability Advisor, allows organisations to take a comprehensive approach to cost and value chain optimisation throughout the entire supply chain.
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