In today's era of fast-moving and global food supply chains, businesses face a pivotal challenge: How to ensure the seamless flow of vital data as their products journey from inception to the hands of the eagerly awaiting consumer? Every company has its own way of running its business, so why would capturing and sharing data be any different? The challenge lies in having a standard method to make this happen and using a common language to share this information with business partners afterward.
First, let's talk about data capture and review the task of receiving food ingredients. Food companies may already be capturing information about the food products they receive at their locations in many different ways. Some may save the hard copies of the packing list or bill of lading sent with their supplier shipment as their official record, while others may save similar documents that came in as email attachments. Others, with more advanced IT systems, may capture data electronically via known industry standards like the ASN or GS1 EPCIS. Then there are others who choose to scan the information sent by their suppliers on printed barcodes on packages. The bottom line is that there is no preferred way to capture this data today.
Data sharing is another story and heavily depends on how your business partners approach data capture and sharing. As a supplier, when you send your data to your customers they should first be able to receive the data on their side and then interpret what this data means. That is where terms like master data, data standardization, and interoperability come in.
Success or failure in complying with FSMA 204 may finally come down to how well companies address this data capture and sharing activity. And this is one area where TagOne has put an enormous effort over the last few years. TagOne provides seven different options to help companies ensure their data can be easily captured and digitized, including a Web UI, Excel/CSV uploads, Mobile UI, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Mobile Scanning, Remote data entry services to digitize data from hard copies and finally an advanced B2B Integration engine. The TagOne Integration Engine addresses multiple data exchange protocols like AS2, SFTP, REST APIs, data exchange formats like JSON and XML, and leading standards like GS1 EPCIS.
Having spent nearly two decades helping companies across multiple industries address their supply chain traceability needs, the TagOne team is excited to share our experiences and best practices with food companies and help them execute a successful FSMA 204 program.