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Food Safety and Traceability requirements for packaged food industry

gaurav_mehra2
Active Participant
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I have a query... How SAP can help handling the Food Safety and Traceability requirements for packaged food industry?

Can someone help me in answering the same?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

gary_decker
Member
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I just started following this space so only just saw your question, which is now a couple of months old.  This is a critical topic these days as many countries are in the process of publkishing new requirements for what has become a global food chain, including the US, Canada, Singapore, the EU, NZ and others.  SAP tracks and responds to traceability and safety concerns and regulations around the world  as well as being proactively involved in the regulatory process. We work with customers and partners to provide capabilities and expertise to maintain compliance and reduce risk.

Food Safety and Traceability are related but different.  Traceability is the simpler issue and a component of an overall food safety program.  SAP's ECC supports traceability with its Batch Cockpit for information within a single instance.  Last year, SAP released a new solution, Global Batch Traceability, to expand the capability beyond a single instance and even to include non-SAP transaction information.  With either solution, traceability can be done interactively and in real time.  In the case of ECC, product holds and recalls can be done interactively from the Batch Cockpit as well.

Food Safety is the more complex issue.  Safe manufacturing is a combination of capabilities and proper deployment.  While the capabilities primarily reside in ECC, there are a number of additional solutions which can enhance basic functionality if needed.  We have partnerships with a number of consulting firms who can audit a companies systems and practices and design a project to become compliant and address the needs of riskier environments like meat and poultry.

Food safety within SAP follows a risk assessment and response model at an enterprise level.  Risks can be identified throughout the vaue chain and safeguards can be put into place to minimize risk and exposure.  Examples of this would be quality checking of inbound raw materials or production steps to kill certain types of bacteria.  System capabilities ensure that responses are consistent and auditable.

Since SAP touches the majority of all  packaged food in the world, our customers depend on us to keep abreast of regulations.  We have found our general model to be  applicable to various regulations around the world.  However, as new requirements are published, there are people within the Industry Business Solutions group who evaluate these for any short-comings.  We also work with  influential companies like Wal-Mart and Nestle, industry groups like the Grocery Marketing Association in the US, partners like Deloitte who have well-regarded food safety practices and even the regulatory agencies like the FDA to stay on top of changes.  Industry Principals like myself are also involved on aqn ongoing basis.  One of my colleagues, Stephen Phelan, has a blog on food safety issues. See  http://scn.sap.com/community/consumer-products/blog/2012/10/08/food-safety-modernization-act-chapter... .Food Safety Modernization Act: Chapter Three – SAP Software

I hope this helps. 

View solution in original post

2 REPLIES 2

gary_decker
Member
0 Kudos

I just started following this space so only just saw your question, which is now a couple of months old.  This is a critical topic these days as many countries are in the process of publkishing new requirements for what has become a global food chain, including the US, Canada, Singapore, the EU, NZ and others.  SAP tracks and responds to traceability and safety concerns and regulations around the world  as well as being proactively involved in the regulatory process. We work with customers and partners to provide capabilities and expertise to maintain compliance and reduce risk.

Food Safety and Traceability are related but different.  Traceability is the simpler issue and a component of an overall food safety program.  SAP's ECC supports traceability with its Batch Cockpit for information within a single instance.  Last year, SAP released a new solution, Global Batch Traceability, to expand the capability beyond a single instance and even to include non-SAP transaction information.  With either solution, traceability can be done interactively and in real time.  In the case of ECC, product holds and recalls can be done interactively from the Batch Cockpit as well.

Food Safety is the more complex issue.  Safe manufacturing is a combination of capabilities and proper deployment.  While the capabilities primarily reside in ECC, there are a number of additional solutions which can enhance basic functionality if needed.  We have partnerships with a number of consulting firms who can audit a companies systems and practices and design a project to become compliant and address the needs of riskier environments like meat and poultry.

Food safety within SAP follows a risk assessment and response model at an enterprise level.  Risks can be identified throughout the vaue chain and safeguards can be put into place to minimize risk and exposure.  Examples of this would be quality checking of inbound raw materials or production steps to kill certain types of bacteria.  System capabilities ensure that responses are consistent and auditable.

Since SAP touches the majority of all  packaged food in the world, our customers depend on us to keep abreast of regulations.  We have found our general model to be  applicable to various regulations around the world.  However, as new requirements are published, there are people within the Industry Business Solutions group who evaluate these for any short-comings.  We also work with  influential companies like Wal-Mart and Nestle, industry groups like the Grocery Marketing Association in the US, partners like Deloitte who have well-regarded food safety practices and even the regulatory agencies like the FDA to stay on top of changes.  Industry Principals like myself are also involved on aqn ongoing basis.  One of my colleagues, Stephen Phelan, has a blog on food safety issues. See  http://scn.sap.com/community/consumer-products/blog/2012/10/08/food-safety-modernization-act-chapter... .Food Safety Modernization Act: Chapter Three – SAP Software

I hope this helps. 

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Hi Gary:

When you say risk assessment and response model, how do we achieve them? what solution should customer implement to well manage all the concerning issues? I only know that PLM should be applied apart from ERP, could you advice more if any? thank you.