The number of FDA-initiated food recalls increased by 700.6% from 2021 to 2022. This led to a 10-year high of 416 million units recalled in 2022
(Source- https://www.crcgroup.com/Tools-Intel/post/product-recall-claim-trends)
A national chicken supplier recalled 148,000 pounds of fully cooked chicken breast patties due to potential contamination
(source- https://www.crcgroup.com/Tools-Intel/post/product-recall-claim-trends)
There were 313 food and beverage recall in 2023, an 8% increase from 2022
These are not mere facts. They are indicators highlighting the importance of food safety. Consider a scenario where these recalls had failed and had caused lot of people to suffer. The outcome would have been more dreadful than mere monetary implications.
This clearly emphasizes importance of a robust traceability and recall management system in an organization. Although organizations understand the importance of such a prompt system, yet they fail to deploy one.
In subsequent sections we will discuss the reasons of such failure and try to unveil how a food and beverage ERP system can help improve traceability and recall management in a food and beverages manufacturing organization.
Why Does an Organization Fail to Deploy a Robust Traceability and Recall Management System?
Challenge 1: Food traceability and recall process generates and tracks large amount of data. Handling it is a very tedious, time taking, and resource exhaustive process.Â
Challenge 2: Often there are multiple systems at work in an organization. The software needs to integrate with the other systems used in the food traceability process, such as inventory management and shipping systems.
Challenge 3: The third challenge is that the software must interact with the existing data in the organization’s system. Interacting with such data for meaningful outcomes can be complex and challenging.
Challenge 4: Food traceability involves complex rules and regulations. The software must be capable enough to handle such complexity associated with food traceability.
Challenge 5: Next, the software needs to provide real-time tracking of the food items throughout the supply chain.
Challenge 6: Â Only a software with ability to provide detailed reports on food traceability can do justice with the process.
Challenge 7: One of the challenges is to ensure the system is up to date. The system needs to be able to track all of the movement of material to produce marketable food products through the supply chain, from farm to table. This can be difficult, especially when so many players are involved in the process.
In addition to these, many challenges are specific to each organization. To address them, companies often rely on temporary solutions for traceability and recall management, rather than implementing a robust, long-term system.
Let’s now navigate towards its solution and explore how an industry specific ERP can be a great aid in combating these challenges and improve traceability and recall management. Since traceability and recall management are two dependent yet different aspects (although tightly knit with each other), let us deal with them individually.
Role of ERP in Improving Traceability:
Traceability is the ability of software to track the material from source to the end of the supply chain. An ERP helps organization with:
Detailed Product Tracking- ERP systems enable detailed tracking of products down to the lot and serial level. It simply means that every ingredient and finished product can be tracked to its production batch level, warehouse location, and even to its source.
BatchMaster ERP for food and beverages, a well-known food and beverage software, offers forward and reverse tracking; making tracking materials across the supply chain in both directions easier.
Real-time data update– Food and beverage manufacturing software captures data automatically. Since the data of the organization is centralized in ERP system, it ensures that all the material and product information are accurate and current. With this information, tracking the material and identifying any issue become easier.
Detailed reporting– Food manufacturing software like BatchMaster ERP for food and beverages, offers detailed traceability reports. These reports are important for compliance, and audit purposes.
Role of ERP in Improving Recall Management:
Despite best efforts, recalls can still happen. When they do, food manufacturing system can make the recall process faster, much more efficient and less damaging to the business. Here’s how:
Quick Identification of Affected Products–
With the tracking capabilities of an ERP system, manufacturers can quickly identify the problematic batches or products. This facilitates the seamless withdrawal of defective lots and ensures the immediate halt of further distribution of compromised/contaminated products.
Efficient Communication:
During a recall, timely communication with customers, suppliers, and regulatory bodies is essential. A food and beverage ERP system provides a centralized platform, enabling organizations to coordinate effectively and ensure prompt, seamless communication with all stakeholders.
Mock recalls–
Food and beverage ERPs, like BatchMaster ERP, facilitate mock recalls—an effective way to simulate the steps required during an actual recall. These practice runs help organizations refine their processes, ensuring the system is prepared and tested to avoid delays when a real recall occurs.
This feature also helps to identify sub-standards products in advance, so that such products are taken out of the supply chain, minimizing the need of recalls.
Through mock recalls organizations can save huge time, money and dampen other repercussions of actual recalls while also meeting the compliance requirements.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, a specialized ERP system for the food and beverage industry is an invaluable tool for enhancing traceability and recall management. By providing detailed product tracking, real-time data capture, and comprehensive reporting, these systems ensure that manufacturers can maintain product safety and quality, meet regulatory requirements, and efficiently manage recalls when they occur. Â
In continuation with the discussion, it is worth mentioning that BatchMaster is a food and beverage ERP software that provides bi-directional traceability. So, with the software you can trace up and down entire supply chain and identify the precise stage of defect. It even supports in Recall management and has capability to handle Mock recalls as well.
Besides, the software has been serving food and beverages manufacturing organizations for almost 4 decades, making it a trustable partner in their growth.
If you are looking for a reliable partner to streamline your traceability and recall management along with solving various business intricacies, BatchMaster ERP can be an ideal ally.
