Avoiding Costly Product Recalls Starts at the Source: Food Traceability Software Helps Manufacturers Track and Maintain Quality
Browse the Center for Disease Control’s U.S. website and you’ll find that new food safety recalls and warnings occur on a near-daily basis. Unfortunately, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s site doesn’t offer much better news for consumers. While it’s inevitable that food safety events will arise, the goal is to identify them early to prevent the products from landing in the shopping carts — or the mouths — of consumers. Food traceability software helps food manufacturers track and manage food quality with the ability to trace ingredients and finished goods forward and backward across their supply chain. Sage X3, ERP designed for food and beverage manufacturers, provides comprehensive traceability functionality designed to help you avoid costly recalls. Learn how in this whitepaper, The Future of Food and Beverage Manufacturing. Below are a few key takeaways from the paper.
Build compliance and traceability into your processes
Product traceability is perhaps the single most important job for food and beverage manufacturers, so it simply cannot be an afterthought when designing your organization’s workflows. It’s vital to choose business software designed to support forward and backward traceability so that at any time, you can identify which raw ingredients were made into which end products and vice versa.
A 2017 Aberdeen study found that food and beverage manufacturers with traceability are 71% more likely to be able to perform a mock recall than those food and beverage manufacturers without traceability. Mock recalls are a vital tool that provides the confidence you can quickly react in the event the real thing happens.
Integrated applications eliminate data silos
Food and beverage manufacturing is a complex industry, and most manufacturers rely on multiple business management software applications. However, when those applications operate in a vacuum, each collecting its own silo of data, it’s exceptionally difficult to gain the visibility necessary to maintain safety, quality, and compliance.
The same Aberdeen study found that food and beverage manufacturers with traceability are more than twice as likely as those without to have full visibility into their quality data. Food traceability applications offer broad process manufacturing functionality along with integration capabilities to provide manufacturers with a single source of the truth for data affecting quality and compliance.
Agile software to remain up to date with changing regulations
Government regulations are continually being refined and adjusted, making it important that your business management software is agile, flexible, and dynamic so you can handle new reporting requirements as they arise.
The Aberdeen study referenced above found that companies with traceability are four times more likely to have the ability to actively monitor compliance. Active monitoring can help food and beverage manufacturers avoid penalties and fines and ensure that their safety and quality policies and procedures are actively being followed.
Not only are recalls financially costly, but they also take a costly toll on a brand’s public perception. Food traceability software can help you avoid recalls by integrating quality, compliance, and traceability into every step of your company’s workflows. Learn more about how Sage X3 works to help you avoid recalls in The Future of Food and Beverage Manufacturing whitepaper.