ERP May Deliver Best Practices For Safe Food Transport
By Melissa Lind, contributing writer
Foodborne illnesses affect nearly 50 million Americans each year and according to the CDC. Compounding this problem are the countless types of food and the associated ways to handle and transport them. FSMA’s Sanitary Transportation of Human Food aims to provide some relief to the situation, but food companies are going to need some help and enterprise resource planning technology may provide the way.
The food industry utilizes a variety of containers for transporting raw ingredients and finished food products and many types require unique storage temperatures, processing and transportation procedures, and storage methods. Foods most commonly associated with pathogens causing illnesses include raw animal products, such as dairy, poultry, meat, eggs, and raw shellfish. Additionally, this list includes vegetables and fresh produce may be contaminated with animal waste or unsanitary water. All of this complexity presents the enormous challenge of keeping food safe.
FSMA’s Sanitary Transportation of Human Food rule strives to create best practices to maintain safety of the food supply by addressing risks such as:
- Improperly refrigerated food
- Inadequate cleaning of transport containers or vehicles
- Failure of protective methods during transport
The rule establishes specific requirements for transportation methods, operations, information availability and exchange, and documentation requirements. This will require different things from different parties across the supply chain, including:
- Producers must provide specifications of sanitary requirements and documentation that methods have been provided to carriers
- Carriers must complete and maintain records for sanitization and inspection of vehicles prior to transport
- Producers and carriers must perform verification and documentation of cold chain management throughout transport
How Enterprise Resource Planning Can Help
As the food supply chain continues to expand and become more complex and customers demand fresher food products, the management of sanitary transportation practices also increases in complexity. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions may provide the answer in managing the processes and documentation required to ensure that sanitary transportation rules are met for both animal and human foods.
Today’s ERP systems are not just single process computer programs. These systems are capable of integrating with other systems and provide the conveniences of electronic data capture and automatic data transfer to provide a big picture of safety programs. ERP systems can collect, stratify, and integrate data to be retrieved as actual information that can be used to identify errant methods and correct or streamline processes. They are also capable of providing transparency while in process. This means supply chain managers may quickly react to a failure which could potentially create a food-safety event and enable immediate recall if an event should occur, preventing additional risk to both the public and the company.
ERP systems can be integrated outside of the company or within the company as facility specifications need. A fully integrated ERP system may eliminate the need for some additional management platforms, allowing for ease-of-use and greater efficiency within the quality assurance, safety and logistics departments.
Compliance in this area is an obvious regulatory requirement, but integration may provide a competitive advantage to manufacturers who can easily produce information that may be desired by customers. Increasing efficiency in documentation practices can help processors identify and respond to risk behavior while in stream and utilize that information to prevent future events.
In an ultra-competitive environment, the food processor that can efficiently manage safety will help ensure food produced will maintain quality standards and keep ever-essential customer confidence and brand loyalty intact.