ERP: How Enterprise Software Can Improve Traceability

Additionally, since food safety regulations emphasize the need for auditable, proven procedures, compliance is aided by integrated functionality for document management and business process modeling. These cross-application functions are vital in supporting the workflows and documentation involved in the food and beverage industry, such as quality management, quality assurance, and nonconformance reporting.

A pure-play ERP suite can help organizations easily manage this cross-application functionality in one place. With integrated project management, enterprises finally have a tool for managing the cost of quality and the resources they put into food safety programs.

3. Traceability needs a deeper dive into product lifecycle management. ERP systems for the food and beverage industry need to have rich functionality for recipe management as well as batch/process shop floor control capabilities. Systems designed for discrete manufacturing industries structured around bills of materials and assembly tracking may not be able to handle food and beverage manufacturing without the addition of a best-of-breed solution for batch execution.

However, the suitability of an ERP system for food and beverage industry compliance runs deeper than just batch execution. The structure of how a product will be produced, and the quality control steps for that product, may begin earlier as part of the product lifecycle management (PLM) phase. Here is where an ERP system with PLM features comes into play, helping define recipes, control plans, and labeling information and making that information readily available to the ERP system’s functions for production management, procurement, and quality management.

For batch distribution, an ERP system with traceability allows the company to know exactly which lots went into each shipment. The system can also track data from carriers on shipment temperatures or link to data from Internet of Things sensors as part of new collaborative approaches to “cold chain” visibility—letting businesses know exactly where each product is at any given moment.

4. Compliance is king—for the government and for the customer. At the core of most food safety regulations is the ability to provide a solid chain of custody over what was involved with each product shipment. The record of how products are produced and what went into them should be consistent and easily traceable from PLM and on through procurement, production, quality management, and distribution. Having all this data in one system, while being able to quickly retrieve it with a few simple queries, provides full traceability not just for regulators, but for customers too.

Instances where formal recalls occur or where government regulators visit a plant might be few and far between, but customer audits and traceability requests are commonplace. That means the most important reason to have a complete recall management and traceability feature is to satisfy not the regulator—but the customer. Fortunately, the same traceability foundation you need for regulatory compliance serves customer demands as well, letting the customer know the full product supply chain, from farm to fork.

Striking the Right Balance

With an integrated pure-play suite that spans all of these four points, you can provide thorough answers in minutes or at most a couple of hours, rather than the days or several hours it might take with bolt-on solutions or spreadsheets. You can also create user-specific dashboards that contain key compliance and traceability data and metrics. The goal is to confidently and efficiently deliver authoritative information on products—and that is exactly what the right food and beverage ERP solution will help you do.

Leedale is a senior advisor for North America at IFS. Reach him at [email protected].