Food Supply Chains are Messy... Here's How You Can Fix It

Risk Management Supply Chain

Taking a closer look at current food supply chain issues, and TagOne’s food tech traceability management systems

The supply chain across varying industries hold multiple latitudes of production integration that appear seamless, but are susceptible to inconsistencies.

When we’re discussing any industry's means of production, there is a vast range of actors involved for even the simplest products, such as the farmer, processor, manufacturer, distributor, the retailer, and of course, the consumer. With the transfer of ownership at each point of the supply chain, it is integral for data to remain consistent and reliable. It’s critical to have industry standards (often supported by GS1) and supporting technologies that can support transparency. Let’s take a closer look at one of the current issues within the food supply chain: food fraud.

Sourcing ingredients from global suppliers presents a major risk for high profile companies which can lead to litigation and reputational risk. Trust, of course, is the key component to ensure that what you are purchasing, and putting in your branded food product, is unadulterated. In order to have absolute confidence in your suppliers and display provenance of your products to consumers, communication in your supply chain is critical. There are high volumes of ingredients being shipped globally, accompanied by documentation (CofA’s, certifications, purchase orders, etc.) that are provided to verify quality and purity. But, there are many instances of missing or tampered documentation resulting in shipments being rejected, recalls or potential audit violations.

In order to help manage the complexity of natural product ingredient supply chains, TagOne developed the cloud-based Enterprise solution which manages your food supply chain data and transactions such as suppliers, approved ingredients, documentation and more. Implementing technology for product traceability will not only benefit the end consumer, but each member of the supply chain. The more information of a product that is captured and shared along the supply chain, the less likely it is for risks to occur.