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Supply chain visibility (SCV) is the ability of parts, components or products in transit to be tracked from the manufacturer to their final destination. According to TechTarget, the primary objective of SCV is to improve the availability of data to stakeholders and customers alike, ultimately strengthening and improving the supply chain.
Most food and beverage companies know they need to evaluate their suppliers on a wide range of supplier behaviors, but for a lot companies, this effort has been historically very labor-intensive. Because it has taken so long to compile performance data across the entire supplier base, most companies are lucky if they manually generate a supplier scorecard more than once or twice a year. Usually this process involves using an Excel spreadsheet and can be quite error-prone as data are transcribed from one system to the Excel spreadsheet. Additionally, even though the company wants to include a broad range of behaviors, they often limit the evaluation to only a few supplier performance attributes. Worst-case scenario, they only use price and on-time deliveries for supplier ranking.
With the final rules for FSMA quickly approaching, it's important to start prepping your organization now rather than later. And while the prep work involved in becoming fully compliant with FSMA can seem like a mountain to climb, one way to ensure you're at least on your way to being better prepared is to scorecard your current suppliers. What is supplier scorecarding and why does it matter for FSMA?
Big Data is not a new term, nor is it a new concept for those of us in the business world. By definition, "big data" refers to "data sets that are too large and complex to manipulate or interrogate with standard methods or tools." Like many industries, food manufacturing, processing, and distribution companies are flooded with data on a daily basis, making manipulation of that data for sound business acumen difficult, if not impossible, without proper tools.
So, how has big data affected food safety and quality? To answer this question, we asked Gary Nowacki, CEO, TraceGains, Inc, to share his insights.
As the TraceGains Customer Conference 2014 enters its second and final day, attendees fill the ballroom, eager to learn from their peers about innovative uses of TraceGains, and to discover some of the new advancements TraceGains has made and will be making in the future. Presenters at this year's conference include industry leaders from Specialty Food Ingredients, McKee Foods, Topco Associates, and others, all of which shared their story of success with genuine enthusiasm and passion for the system and the improvements they have been able to make as a result of this tool.
Throughout the food industry, most, if not all, scorecarding of suppliers is driven by the constraints of purchasing and cost accounting systems. Supplier scorecarding provides valuable insight into the quality and reliability of a supplier and their product. Rating and ranking suppliers based on business-critical key performance indicators (KPIs) allows food manufacturers to understand how individual suppliers affect the company’s product quality, risk, compliance, customer satisfaction, and overall business performance.
