If you’re part of a regulated industry supply chain whether it’s pharmaceutical, chemicals or food, traceability is a necessary evil. Governing bodies and codes of practice regulate the industry to ensure standards are implemented for consumers, examples include FDA’s Code of Federal Regulations Title 21 (CFR) and Current Good Manufacturing Practices (CGMPs) , FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) and the BRC Global Standards.
Just saying “Batch Traceability” sounds really easy, but in reality it’s a complex multi-dimension business issue which touches all parts of the enterprise, and should be managed in a holistic manner.
We all hear the term Big Data and its loose definition of large volumes of data, and its related problems with data capture, storage, search, analysis and visualization to name but a few. But depending on the industry, product, customer and user, Big Data problems tend to be specific to you!
Searching through batch records and other related data can take time, with input from different departments, when trying to understand the cause and effect, when undertaking a real life recall or a BRC audit. But with the paradigm shift created by SAP HANA, data visualization and predictive analytics totally changes the way users consume data and analyze business problems.
Visualization is the optimum way to view data, dramatically increasing visibility to help hotspots, while predictive analytics can provide early warning of problems before they arrive, thus reducing time and cost to make timely and informed decisions.
An example of Visualization would be a traceability dashboard or plotting customers with the defective batch on a google map. While for predictive analysis trending customer complaints indicating a potential product re-call.
ProcessForce already provides relationship map visualization to tackle the topic of batch traceability. For example has helped UK food and beverage producer Evolution Foods support their BRC requirements.
With the introduction of 360 Traceability , this SAP HANA based solution will take the traceability topic to another level. Planned release for 9.1 SAP Business One version for SAP HANA, watch this space over the coming months to get an update of this revolutionary industry solution.
