GTP:ICT view

From TraceFood

INTRODUCTION-INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

For an interactive demonstration see foodtraceability.eu

This view is dedicated to those who implement/integrate IT systems deployed in the food industry which have some form of impact on food information management.

This page will provide viewpoints of traceability with respect to how ICT actors should specify, develop and deploy traceability systems for both internal and chain traceability. The document will contain few pointers to specific technologies or systems, but rather describe issues that are typically related to building electronic traceability systems. There are however in all system development some preconditions and invariants (givens) that will provide the backbone and background for the views that are discussed.

OPINIONS/FACTS

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 could 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?
How do we cover costs related to improved traceability information, 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?

Functional analysis

Above, several issues have been outlined that need to be addressed when designing a chain traceability system. Many of the same issues are similar for internal traceability solutions.

A functional analysis needs to address the business processes that are involved in or are needed to implement traceability. Different viewpoints and stakeholders will provide information about which functions a traceability system should address and how.

The granularity and scope of a functional analysis can be different:

Analyse and describe the current processes and systems.
Define a envisioned system to analyse and describe how to change and adapt the business processes using gap analysis, business process improvement techniques, and technology integration.
Identify and define business processes and opportunities related to traceability by suggesting and specifying system functionality
Describe strategic information points in the business that are vital to improve and enforce traceability.
Define decision support points in the business where traceability information may provide important or useful.
Define the decision support processes including functional system interfaces to other ICT systems in the business as well as traceability interfaces supported or offered by trading partners and other actors that may provide additional, qualified and more fine-granular information.

Information harvesting

One of the main issues related to chain traceability is the ability to uniquely identify trade units. The granularity of identified trade units can vary, but a recommendation is to at least uniquely identify trade items that go to different trade partners. This enables a better relationship between the outgoing shipments from a company with the ingoing in others. Information harvesting on a detailed internal traceability level will not be covered here.

The basic information to harvest will thus be to internally:

harvest indentities on all input factors into the production. This will require some relationships between recipies, production processes and the final products. All events where particular factors are included, should be collected, i.e., time and relationships to other actors, trade units and trace units.
provide relationships between ingoing and outgoing traceable units at a granularity that minimise the impact of possible contamination or errors of the input factors with respect to recalls and at the same time minimise the investments with respect to data collection in the production.

In a chain traceability point-of-view can the following information be harvested from the suppliers based on product orders or similar business processes:

shipment time, shipment id, eventually identities of the shipped products with a finer granularity with respect to unique identificaiton

The receiver needs to collect:

shipment receival time on a shipment id
information related to the shipment like received unique trade or trace units
stock/inventory management of incoming trade units, e.g., additional information about shelf life.

The supplier can thus be expected to provide enough detailed information to enable unique management of incoming shipments of trace/trace units to be used in the internal production.

Non-functional issues and requirements

Non-functional issues or qualities are important to consider to enable a robust and working system architecture for traceability systems.

Examples of issues to be covered in such an analysis can be found in ISO/IEC 9126-1.

Important considerations that may have attention is the schism between privacy and transparency, security, availability of services and information, storage time, performance, scalability, etc.

Preconditions and invariants

Internet and Web technology is assumed to be most important as infrastructure invariants, especially for chain traceability solutions.
Automatic electronic data capture will be increasingly used throughout the value chains.
Existing standards and protocols should be followed as much as possible.

The TraceFood framework contains a specification for standardised information exchange called TraceCore. TraceCore is suggested as a minimal information exchange solution for exchange of traceability related information between actors in the food chains. TraceCore together with branch-specific dictionaries is supposed to fulfil the basic needs for exchange of traceability information within specific food branches.

A stakeholder analysis may prove necessary to identify which kind of information that is demanded by different stakeholders. Thus, adaptation of content can be provided by systems implementing traceability within a food chain.

Standardised information exchange

Exchange and sharing of information that either are directly related to the physical flow of goods, or to the properties of these goods are necessary to enable electronic traceability. Without the ability to access information that has been collected along the value chain, traceability is almost impossible for other actors.

The EU Trace project has targeted this requirement by working out which basic information that is needed to enable traceability across the chain. TraceCore has been specifically designed to enable exchange and sharing of core traceability information.

It is however other ways to enable information sharing in the value chain using existing business-to-business standards (see Exchange and sharing)

Quality data on food items

Basic chain traceability is mostly connected to create relationships between incoming and outgoing traceable units in and between the value chain actors. This makes it possible to build traceability graphs that can be used to traverse relationships in a track and/or trace manner. This is especially helpful for food safety purposes related to withdraws or retracts of "dangerous" food items.

Traceability is as described in the other viewpoints, a matter of enabling a tool for different types business processes that can be used in addition or instead of existing processes. Another use will require the availability of information that can be used to describe and document properties of the treatment and state of specific food items. Some data will be of a general or generic type that thus can be exposed for all similar food items, while other data may be connected on a much finer granularity.

In developing ICT systems, it will be important to model and design relationships between traceable units and other information that the traceable units have relationship directly or indirectly to. Issues to consider will be the amount of data actually available and how these data can be presented to a specific actor for a specific purpose. This will require adaptable user interface where the information exposed is tailored to the specific use. Adaptability thus needs to be specified and designed both related to what to present and how to present it.

The information can be shared in different fashions, either as part of a product shipping or as a portal service available for authorised parties.

System integration vs internal traceability system

One of the main issues in all organisations dealing with different business processes is how to build and maintain a computing infrastructure in the most optimised way. An existing computing infrastructure means established procedures and big upfront investments as well as ongoing service and management costs.

Thus, introducing electronic traceability into an organisation without such systems means a lot of investigation and evaluation of different options related to how to implement and deploy the new functionality. Existing systems that already are established and in use should be considered with respect to the specific traceability requirements.

In the most basic form, traceability can be seen as an extension to traditional supply-chain management including stock management. Business-to-business systems deal with order management and financial transactions and would thus also include information that is vital for traceability. Apparently, many systems are built with specific purpose(s) and are tailored to best suite these purposes. Additions and adaptations to existing systems may be considered when introducing new functionality, or to build or acquire new systems that are including or solely offer the required functionality.

Separation of concerns is important in software engineering, thus, it is important to analyse the impact of the different strategies related to establishing an internal traceability system. This will also include managing integration, data capture, communication, system management etc. Software architecture models and descriptions are most often used to discuss and reason about which kind of influence different functional and non-functional decisions may lead to.

WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK

What other people think
Consumers	A consumer rarely takes an interest in the ICT view. At the moment, most information the consumer gets about a product is read from labels printed on the products they buy. However, it is easy to imagine a future where more information is available about a given product if the consumer accesses an electronic interface, for example using their mobile phones or private computers, or designated information terminals at the retailers. In these cases their primary concern is with the graphical layout, ease of navigation and relevance of the information presented. Go to actor.
Operational	Operators main concern with the ICT view is that it should not create too much extra work. This includes increase in information that needs to be registered and maintained, and how this is done. Providing interfaces to existing software and automatic registration equipment will have a high priority in their view. Go to actor.
Supply chain	The main concern of the supply chain with regards to ICT is privacy and security. They need to know the data they deliver to the chain will not be misused by neither unautorised nor authorised users. They will not hand over business secrets like ingredients used in a product and who their main customers are to other members of the supply chain. The system they deliver their data to needs to provide trust that their information is secure. Go to actor.
Quality Assurance	Quality assurance main concern with the ICT is trust, security and ability to provide functionality and interfaces suited for quality assurance. If they cannot trust the quality of the data they receive nor the ability for the system to manage provided information, they cannot perform their role as required. Go to actor.
Public Authority	Public authorities main concern with ICT is quality and dependability. They need to know that if a food scare occurs, the systems are available and that they can have full overview of a chain. The systems need to provide information of such a quality that the system can be both used to find causes and be used to recall/withdraw dangerous food. Go to actor.

GTP:ICT view

From TraceFood

Contents

INTRODUCTION-INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

OPINIONS/FACTS

Stakeholder analysis

Business issues

Technical issues

Practical issues

Functional issues

Functional analysis

Information harvesting

Non-functional issues and requirements

Preconditions and invariants

Standardised information exchange

Quality data on food items

System integration vs internal traceability system

WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK

FURTHER READING AND TRAINING MATERIAL

Presentations

Web resources

Chain traceability technology

RFID

Views

Personal tools

Navigation

Good Traceability Practice

Traceability projects

Actor viewpoints

Traceability references

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