When consumers purchase food from their local grocery store, they don’t often think about how it got there. As food travels longer distances from all over the world, the responsibility for keeping those supply chains safe and accountable falls to the food producers themselves. Thankfully, the necessary technology to monitor those supply chargereins with increasing accuracy (enhanced with artificial intelligence [AI]) has evolved significantly since the supply chain disruptions four years ago.  

More than ever before, food producers are deploying Internet of Things (IoT) solutions that allow them to track food products from the moment they leave the field to the time they reach the consumer. It is crucial to deploy the most evolved supply chain hardware and software packages to manage the extensive and often complex data necessary to make this possible. Companies that can locate their products with pinpoint accuracy in real time have significant advantages over less technologically advanced competitors. 

Technological Advances Drive Progress

Well-functioning supply chains allow farmers and manufacturers to ensure food is delivered safely to grocery stores sustainably. Additionally, should problems occur within the production cycle, IoT technologies can aid in protecting consumers from food that doesn’t meet the high standards required by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Building robust supply chain monitoring systems can seem daunting, but working with the right partners can help you identify what technology you need and the most cost-effective method of using it. Whether it’s radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, ultra-wideband, cellular tracking or GPS data, technological advances can help secure today’s ever-lengthening food supply chains. 

There are now combined hardware and software systems that provide 99.9% or better data accuracy as businesses track assets from the field to consumer, which offers companies a plan to use their strategic assets more efficiently and effectively. By combining IoT hardware with groundbreaking software, building a safe, secure and sustainable food supply chain is possible.

Data Collection Drives Safety 

According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), food supply chain transparency is vital, as almost one in 10 people suffer from foodborne diseases annually. The same WEF study estimates that these diseases kill nearly 500,000 people a year. Improved traceability allows food producers to act quickly to stop contaminated food from reaching consumers . 

The more granular the data collection at each step of the process, the better. Enhanced real-time monitoring reduces food waste and ensures compliance with environmental, social and governance standards. Catching problems as quickly as possible can also save your organization time and money.

Item-level traceability technologies enable food suppliers to provide information on the origin, sourcing methods, and freshness of products, building customer trust. These technologies also simplify recall management by quickly identifying and removing affected products. Compliance with regulations, such as the FDA's Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), is made much easier through accurate record-keeping and tracking using the latest technology.

By tracking the food throughout the production process, you can prove definitively that all the proper steps were followed. Additionally, you can halt production if you discover that steps were missed before the tainted food ever reaches consumers. Having the right technology in place to accomplish these goals is critical.

Why Traceability Matters

Traceability of the food from field to factory and beyond is essential. Not only is it important on the rare instance where unsafe food makes it out of the factory and can be recalled quickly and efficiently, it also allows food producers to make sure the product is as fresh as possible when it reaches the consumer. 

Partnering with companies that can offer sophisticated supply chain monitoring hardware and software offers you insights into how long products have been at a specific location. By deploying the latest AI-driven technology, you can be alerted when food has been sitting too long. 

Additionally, IoT solutions can provide you with the ability to put in place a more accurate “first-in, first-out” (FIFO) inventory management system. Without adequate oversight and software integration, inventory management depends solely on human input, which could lead to errors. Making sure the right food products are shipped to processing facilities allows those partners to certify the freshness of their products as they are delivered to consumers. 

Serve Your Sustainability Goals

Environmental sustainability is increasingly important to business partners and consumers alike, and IoT technology can help make your operations more sustainable over time. There are two action items companies can implement immediately using IoT technology to improve their operational sustainability:

• Rather than use disposable shipping containers, consider using multiuse and long-term-use reusable containers to ship your food products. IoT technology, combined with an AI-powered software package, can help you keep track of where your containers are at all times. It can help supply chain managers prove the return on investment associated with reusable containers. When that data is integrated with other variables like the number of trucks on the road, distance traveled by those trucks, and how much product is on each truck, supply chain managers can make better decisions that protect the business while improving overall sustainability.
• IoT technology will also allow you to cube your trucks more efficiently, allowing you to use fewer half-filled trucks on the road. Deploying tags and tracking software will provide you the necessary information to cube your trucks as close to 100% as possible. Fuller trucks mean more efficient delivery using fewer vehicles, which reduces your carbon footprint by using less fuel and decreasing emissions.

The Bottom Line

The cost of purchasing an overarching technology solution to manage your supply chain may seem steep, but it is quickly becoming a necessity. As the food production industry grows increasingly competitive, any technology that can provide you with an edge can be the difference between being profitable or not. Over time, however, your streamlined organization will save enough money to pay for your technology investment many times over. The more sophisticated the package, which should include AI-driven searches, the more savings you’ll accrue to the bottom line. Given the trend of automation in other aspects of the food manufacturing industry, it makes sense to use IoT tools to hone your understanding of what is going on in your supply chain.

With the complexity of food and beverage supply chains, many existing systems may already be in place and relied on for business intelligence and planning. The right partner can integrate data both to and from those systems to provide seamless views of how your supply chain operations and volume production affect all aspects of business intelligence and trend monitoring. A qualified, reputable partner should be able to determine what elements of your business must be tracked and create solutions that are scalable and repeatable so your hardware and software package can expand as your business does. Adding tracking hardware and a robust software system to collate and categorize the most important operational data will allow you to keep the food supply chain safe, trace the food from the time it leaves your facility to the time it reaches the consumer, and help you reach your sustainability goals.