Traceabilityfoodend 2 end

Follow your food

Executive Summary

Regulatory Foundations for Traceability

US (FSMA)

Europe (FIR / LMIV)

Beyond Regulations

Market Differentiation

Advanced Supply Chain Management

E Performance Container

movilitas positioning on proposed solutions in the Food Industry

Clear Overview over your entire Supply Chain

A company owned approach using SAP Global Batch Traceability

An industry specific approach using GS1 fTrace

Keeping track of your returnable assets (e.g. E Performance Container Tracking)

movilitas Partner

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About movilitas consulting

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Executive Summary

As a very critical industry for the health and well-being of people all over the world, the global food industry is subject to a vast amount of regulations throughout the global supply chain. With ongoing technical progress in automation and data processing, regulations will not only continue to grow, but will also demand more and more input from all participants in the supply chain. To achieve compliance with growing global regulations, it will become necessary to provide fully traceable evidence about all supply chain movements from raw materials to the finished product. Looking beyond regulations, having full transparency and control over your supply chain can also result in fundamental advantages over the competition. If the available data is used properly, it can be harnessed and leveraged to gain a strategic business advantage including improvements in the overall supply chain procedures and a boost in customer trust and confidence by providing transparency about food origins.

Now is the time to take action and evolve your supply chain strategy. Now is the time to move beyond simply meeting the minimum expectations of regulatory guidelines and evolve to a more strategic approach to complete supply chain integrity.

Now is the time to keep your company out of the headlines because of a recall or compromised link in your extended supply chain.

By implementing the right solution for your business, you will comply with global regulations for food tracing, dramatically enhance supply chain visibility, and as a result be able to provide thorough and timely information about your products to end-customers.

movilitas consulting’s positioning for achieving these goals in the food industry is outlined in this whitepaper.

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The EU regulation 1169/2011 about food declaration, in Germany also known as LMIV (Lebensmittelinformations-Verordnung), will be effective as of 13th of December, 2014. It regulates which information needs to be made transparent to the consumer so they can perform a well-informed buying decision. Effectively, all packaged food products are affected by this regulation in one way or another. One important aspect is the clear indication of the origin on the finished product. The implementing regulation 1337/2013 as one example further details this aspect, motivated by the fact that consumers are also interested in the country of origin or place of provenance of other meat types. This regulation lays out the rules for the labeling of fresh, chilled and frozen meat of swine, sheep, goats and poultry, which will be mandatory from 01.04.2015 onwards. In addition tonew labeling requirements, this legislation mandates a thorough cooperation andinformation exchange between all suppliers in the extended food supply chain.In the case of specially marked regional or national products, knowing your ingredientscan be a crucial factor for product naming. The LMIV therefore is not so much aboutlabeling products, but rather knowing your supply chain and being able to trace back your product to the origin.

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) issued by the Food and DrugAdministration (FDA) in the United States in 2011 is a summary of numerous regulations addressing all aspects of today’s global food supply chain, such as production safety, supplier safety and transport safety. It is the first thorough update of federal food safety legislation in the US since 1938 and addresses the entire food supply chain from farmer to processor to the end consumer. Within the FSMA, accreditations or partnership models are required in the same manner as inspections and preventive controls. The deadlines for the different regulations will kick-in between mid 2015 and early 2016 and this means systems need to be up and running to provide documented evidence about compliance to the FDA. This implies ”static” records, such as process descriptions or supplier accreditations as well as “dynamic” records such as quality test results, batch monitoring or deviation reports. When records are evaluated during the inspection process and a company can’t prove compliance, it’s the same end result as if a company hasn’t complied to the regulations in the first place. According to the FDA, all of this information needs to be accessible within 24 hours after a FDA request. In other words, whenever a consumer complaint to a specific product item is raised, a company will need to provide thorough transparency in only one working day to clearly demonstrate which ingredients from which supplier batches have gone into which quantities of a specific food item. Wouldn’t it make life a lot easier if a food manufacturer could obtain all of this information with only one click of the mouse by leveraging the right technology combined with accurate data capture? We will present appropriate solutions for traceability of whole batches throughout the entire supply chain in the later sections.

LMIV (Lebensmittel-informations-Verordnung)

FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act)

There are currently two essential food safety regulations which are relevant for products sold in Europe and the US. These regulations build the minimal requirements food companies need to adopt in order to be compliant in these markets. As we will demonstrate later in this whitepaper, in many cases it may be worth considering going beyond the minimal regulatory requirements to gain additional benefits by implementing a traceability solution.

Regulatory Foundations for Traceability

FIR (Food Information Regulation)

Beyond Regulations

Even though regulations might be the trigger to kick-off a traceability project inside your company, it would be a missed opportunity to limit your view only to the specifc aspects of the regulation. By taking a broader scope and considering the topics described below, additional benefits can be achieved when adequate tracing measures are implemented.

Market Differentiation

The strongest argument for advanced traceability capabilities for a food manufacturer might be differentiation in the market in the minds of consumers. As regulations demand a clear indication about product origins, companies are required to keep records about their suppliers and the delivered ingredients.

Why limit the information available to consumers to only that required by regulations?

Why not leverage the power of your internal data to enable even more transparency and information exchange with an end consumer?

This differentiated approach and transparency could lead to more trust in your products and will help shape the future of your brand. The indication of the country of origin or place of provenance on the labeling of foods is becoming a highly technical topic for food business anyway. Driven by consumers’ expectations and controlling authorities’ needs for clearer rules, the trend seems to be the provision of more and more market information by applying voluntary and mandatory origin labeling for foods in general, and additional information for specific food products in particular.

The same argument also applies to different lines of business. There are different regulations in place for meat products than there are for dairy products; and again different regulations for fish or vegetables. For mixed products it might even be unclear which regulations are binding or which products might have been omitted by regulations completely. The systems that need to be established in your company must adhere to the most significant regulations relevant for your products. When you have to take the time to establish systems and processes for certain products, why not extend this infrastructure to other products as well?

Localfood

Advanced Supply Chain Management

Enabling product traceability throughout your supply chain is not just essential for printing product origins on finished goods. Capturing product data throughout your extended supply chain will also enable better monitoring and management which can release substantial savings along the way to your finished product.

Which suppliers are relevant for a finished product? Which supplier batch belongs to which purchase order? What ingredients go into which production order? What are the exact retailers my call-back batch has been delivered to?

Knowing the answers to these questions can help you track material flows through your supply chain more efficiently and also discover unrevealed inefficiencies in existing business processes. In the case of product issues, you will have all of the required information easily at hand and can react more quickly. Or, your internal teams will be empowered with more information to discover root causes of the problem without extensive research through the scattered pieces of information at each link in the supply chain. If a product batch issue has occurred, it can be crucial to identify affected products as fast as possible in order to limit the damage it has on product stock, distribution channels, brand perception and of course consumer health.

Supply chainSupplier Distributor Manufacturer

Retailer Logistics Consumer

E PerformanceOn July 1, 2014, in cooperation with GS1 Germany, the German meat industry brought into effect a long-since prepared initiative to harmonize transport boxes in its supply chain, the so called E Performance Containers. Starting from this date, a total of 15 major players in the German meat industry have committed by signing a code of conduct to replace the previously used red containers by the new light blue containers. Within the next five years the change from red to blue shall be achieved step by step. The new light blue E Performance containers differ not only by their color,but also by design features.

The new containers feature an in-mold label with GRAI in the bar code.The GRAI (Global Returnable Asset Identifier) is a globally unique GS1 identification keyfor returnable items; coded as a GS1-128 barcode. It allows you to track the containerat any time without applying a new label after each cleaning. Based on the GRAI,the user can always trace back the life of an E Performance container to any point in time.The serialized container number allows a more efficient control of the company's internal container flow as well as monitoring exchange of containers between partners in the supply chain. It reduces plagiarism, increases hygiene standards and therefore also increases consumer safety. It enables the efficient and trouble-free use in automated, semi-automated and manual handling systems.

Attached to a SSCC number for a goods shipment, the container can also be used to assist the tracking of the contained product throughout the supply chain.

source: GS 1 Germany

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movilitas positioning on proposed solutions in the Food Industry

Based on the information and trends outlined in the white paper, movilitas has shaped the following proposed solutions in order to address the challenges of traceability requirements in the food industry.

Clear Visibility across your entire Supply Chain

In order to have the complete picture of all suppliers in the supply chain of your product, it is required to link information from different companies with different IT systems and different data formats all in one place. Depending on the size of your company and business case, it could be more advantageous to realize an on-premise solution and benefit from information being readily available in-house, or to participate in industry solutions which start to emerge in different branches of the food industry. Movilitas can guide you through analysis and design of the most suitable solution for your company and also serve as your implementation partner of choice for either approach.

A company owned approach using SAP Global Batch Traceability

SAP Global Batch Traceability allows you to track and trace batch managed products from raw materials to finished products by creating a complete product batch genealogy. The batch genealogy is achieved by tracking batches and linking them together with business activities such as purchase orders, production orders, and deliveries throughout the supply chain.

Designed for high performance, SAP GBT provides your company with greater and faster product insight. It provides a corporate-level view of product genealogy by providing traceability from raw materials to the point of distribution at granular levels. The power of SAP GBT helps to perform holds, withdrawals, returns and recalls more precisely in case of product issues. If required, external parties or business partners can also obtain access to certain views or transactions.

As one of the first global consultancies trained on this technology, movilitas can provide both consulting and implementation services for SAP GBT. You can find further information about SAP GBT and our offerings in the Movilitas GBT white paper:http://www.movilitas.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Movilitas_GBT_Flyer.pdf.pdf

An industry specific approach using GS1 fTrace

In contrast to a standalone solution under your own control, fTrace from GS1 takes a broader approach and aims at connecting distributed stored supply chain event data via a centralized access point. With this solution it is possible to retrieve information about each step in your supply chain from one central place. All members of the supply chain need to update either their locally hold repository or a centrally provided database by GS1 with their information before passing on the product to the next party. This requires in the first place having (mobile) data capture devices available to capture supply chain events at your site. Further on, if stored in a local repository the data needs to be accessible via the correct interface formats for the fTrace service (i.e. EPCIS standard 1.1). Any requesting party (e.g. an end customer or B2B partner) can then post requests to this central discovery service (e.g. by scanning a data matrix code on the finished product) and retrieve approved data about this specific product item (e.g. product origin, manufacturing date, etc.).

movilitas can help you analyze the requirements in your company to deliver relevantsupply chain events into the fTrace database or connect your local EPCIS repository to the fTrace landscape. One market-proven solution to capture events in the supply chain and create EPCIS messages is Movilizer for Track & Trace, a platform independent mobile solution which can be integrated into any backend system. Movilizer would either be suitable to directly call any web service for immediately sending the captured event data to the GS1 fTrace database, or it can be integrated into any local EPCIS repository. Further information about the Movilizer for Track & Trace can be found in our white paper:http://www.movilitas.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Movilizer_SAP_Track_and_Trace.pdf

In case you opt to store the captured data in your own local EPCIS repository, this will provideyour company with massive possibilities to draw additional benefit for your business, such astracing individually identified product flows or controlling business steps via predefined rule sets.The system of choice would be the SAP Auto ID Infrastructure (AII), which might be especiallyinteresting for companies also heading for advanced returnable asset tracking (see next section).

source: GS 1 Germany

Keeping track of your returnable assets (e.g. E Performance Container Tracking)

Returnable transport items (RTIs) travel from a supplier’s location to a customer’s location and then return back to the supplier. These reusable assets like containers, pallets, totes, racks or bins will be returned to the supplier. The RTI may also travel to more business partners in the supply chain. Reusable assets can be a significant expense to the enterprise as pallets and containers are often the largest part of nonproduction expenses. Also to meet just-in-time and just-in-sequence requirements, it might be crucial to have the ability to track reusable assets.

The standard SAP AII business scenarios can be used to manage, load, and unload RTIs as well as to track their current location and evaluate stocks and cycle times. SAP AII 7.0 supports RFID-enabled processes for reusable assets such as returnable pallets as well as barcode identified tracking as used in the example of the E Performance container.

SAP AII supports both plant-internal processes as well as cross-plant and cross-business-partner processes. These processes provide you with transparency across your complete inventory of RTIs. It enables you to automate processes, reduce stocks, shorten cycle times, and recognize bottlenecks early on. SAP AII provides different variants to run these business processes. The following figure shows a process variant using decentralized SAP AII systems.

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These processes help your company perform evaluations for certain RTIs in SAP AII, SAP Event Management, and SAP NetWeaver. Your company can use this to gain information about stocks and cycle times, and to adjust your stocks accordingly. SAP Event Management can also be used to generate alerts if expected events do not occur, for example.

Benefits of tracking Returnable Transport Items are that they reduce misrouted containers, accelerate the handling of containers at cargo terminals, fully utilize resources (e.g. by reducing container stock), track the parts that are in the container, and make the containers available faster for reuse.

SAP Partner

SAP is at the center of today’s technology revolution, developing innovations that not only help businesses run like never before, but also improve the lives of people everywhere.movilitas consulting is an SAP software and services partner, provides end-to-end SAP Supply Chain, Track & Trace and Mobility Solutions.

Movilizer Partner

The Movilizer Enterprise Mobile Platform is the fastest way to develop, deploy and run enterprise mobile apps. Mobility delivers business improvement and innovation, but the technology is complex and fast-moving - the Movilizer Platform gives you the agility to react to changing requirements without compromises.

GS1 Germany Solution Provider

GS1 is dedicated to the design and implementation of global standards and solutions to improve the efficiency and visibility of supply and demand chains globally and across sectors. The GS1 system of standards is the most widely used supply chain standards system in the world.movilitas consulting is actively participating in the GS1 network on a global level.

movilitas partners

To learn more about our capabilities in the Track & Trace area please contact us directly and we will be happy to discuss your requirements in more detail.

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movilitas consulting NA10330 Old Columbia Rd. Columbia, MD 20146 800-359-1712info.na@movilitas.com

movilitas consulting EUHermsheimer Straße 568163 Mannheim (EastSite VI) +49 6211502040info@movilitas.com

EUROPE

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About movilitas consulting

movilitas consulting, an SAP software and services partner, provides end-to-end SAP Supply Chain, Track & Trace and Mobility Solutions. Movilitas Consulting solutions enhance customers’ control of their extended supply chain, ensure compliance with global regulations and optimize field-based business processes helping to accelerate the pace of business performance.

Alexander PoppBranch Manager Food Industry

alexander.popp@movilitas.com