GTP:Development of chain traceability systems
From TraceFood
Contents |
Introduction
This section will provide information and issues related to the development and deployment of electronic chain traceability systems. While some of the ICT-related content within the GTP are concerned with business internal processes and the interface towards the outside, this part will look upon the "outside" only. This means that the viewpoint will not be for single actors and how they operate their business, but rather on value chains consisting of many cooperating or partly cooperating partners within specific food sectors or across many food sectors.
Stakeholders
Identification and prioritising the most important stakeholders for the chain traceability system.
- Who is the most important stakeholder of the system and what are the basic objectives, needs, requirements, responsibilities and rights of this stakeholder?
- Which others are stakeholders and what are the objectives, needs, requirements, responsibilities and rights of these stakeholders with respect to the system?
- Which stakeholders/objectives/needs are within/without an envisioned chain traceability system? Important to prioritise needs/requirements, responsibilties and rights for those that are within the system, and to specify clearly what is out of scope of the system.
- Given an objective about establishing a traceability system. What are the main functions of this system and is it possible to quantify/operationalise how these can be met (e.g., fast and precise withdrawal/recall of certain goods)?
- Is it possible to define system metaphores that is better able to communicate objectives and basic functionality? Which are best fitting for the different stakeholders and/or functionality?
Stakeholder analysis
A traceability system should be result of a stakeholder analysis where different stakeholders clearly have expressed which stakes they have in a new system. This applies both for the introduction/acquisition of traceability systems from ICT systems vendors as well as building such systems internally.
Some of the issues that should be covered in such an analysis are:
Business issues
- Why should an actor invest in a traceability system? What are the main business drivers?
- How will introduction of a traceability system affect the business positively and negatively?
- Which production, logistics and other business processes are affected by an integrated traceability system?
- What is the cost and gain of process improvement and changes with respect to traceability?
- What investments are necessary for a successful implementation of traceability?
- Which information do we want to share and to whom?
- Which information do we want from our trading partners?
- How do we cover costs related to improved traceability information and information quality and granularity?
- How can traceability information improve decision support, customer relations, authority reporting, production monitoring, supply-chain management?
Technical issues
- Which production equipment and ICT system are directly or indirectly affected by a new system?
- Which integration points are necessary with existing systems to improve traceability?
- Which changes are necessary to do on existing systems?
- How can a new system be integrated/adapted to the existing systems?
- How well is the infrastructure able to manage the new system?
- How much information capturing can be automated?
- How much quality checking can be automated?
- What are the main non-functional requirements for the system?
Practical issues
- Where should traceability information be captured?
- In which form and granularity should information be captured?
Functional issues
- In what way can traceability information be used in the business?
- What are the main functional requirements for application of traceability information
- How can basic traceability information be used to improve current electronic business process support?
- What are the main functional interfaces between traceability and other business processes?
Functionality
Given a chain traceability system (independent of architecture/infrastructure):
- What are the most important/primary functions/needs/requirements that such a system shall ensure?
- What are the secondary/tertiary functions/needs/requirements?
- Which functions/needs/requirements is within/outside the given system? Prioritise functions/needs/requirements.
- Work out primary system scenarios/use cases that show the main functionality that is to be provided to user/system actors.
- Work out/discuss secondary system scenarios/use cases that eventually show additional functionality that can be provided by the system to the relevant actors.
Information
When stakeholders and basic functionality have been identified and defined, the following steps can be followed:
- Which primary information is necessary/required with respect to the main stakes/requirements in the system?
- Which secondary information will increase the value of the system?
- What is the responsibility of the stakeholders and/or participating actors to provide the necessary information? Are all actors able to provide the necessary information?
- To what degree must the system "understand" all information that can be sent as traceability information? Is it necessary for the system to make all information received persistent?
- Who is responsbile for the information quality and how can the information quality be enforced and maintained?
- How should holes in a traceability value chain be identified and managed?
Scaleability and performance
What are the performance requirements to the given system based on the requirements and stakes expressed?
- What are the requirements with respect to population of traceability information from the information produced in the traceability chain? When should data be available? How often should information producers populate/update their traceability data?
- How fast must the traceability information be available and consistent with respect to primary/secondary needs/requirements etc?
- How long should the traceability information be available and what are the premises for storing and accessing historical information? Is it possible that the performance requirements will change after a while with respect to a faster response time?
- What are the expectations/requirements for transaction management with respect to population of information? (new information types, new information providers, granularity of information, heterogeneity with respect to when actors send information etc.)
- How often is it expected that the chain traceability system will be used for the primary needs, secondary needs etc.? What is the expected response time for the different functions?
Other non-functional requirements
The following properties of the system should be discussed and eventually expressed as requirements or system principlies. How important are principles/requirements like vulnerability, safety, security, privacy, usability, extendability, scalability etc.?
- How is it possible to ensure the main chain traceability functionality and at the same time address important concerns like vulnerability, safety, security, privacy?
- What are the requirements for vulnerability, safety, security, privacy, usability, extendability, scalability etc.?
- How is it possible to manage inevitable changes in information/formats/services over time? How stable is it necessary that the system interfaces are? Which strategies should be chosen to embrace changes?
- How should the system manage technological changes with respect to tagging, data capture, information availability, distribution, search technology etc.? What influence has technology of the system presently and in the future?
A discussion and presentation of traceability system quality is thus important. Examples of such a discussion is the schism between privacy and transparency.
Examples of issues to be covered in such an analysis can be found in ISO/IEC 9126-1.
