As a global brand, the ability to investigate deep into one’s supply chain often involves multiple systems and combination of electronic and paper data records. While supply chain traceability is important to most organizations, especially when an unexpected crisis occurs, it becomes critical in the life sciences industry where the inability to inspect and understand quickly can result in potential health risks to the public.
Such was the case with Fonterra, a New Zealand multinational publicly traded dairy cooperative with annual revenue of $20 billion (NZD) and responsible for 30% of the world’s dairy exports, when a potential infant formula contamination forced the organization to respond with a precautionary product recall on a large scale. While the contamination was ultimately determined not involve Fonterra products, the event highlighted the urgent need for a uniform traceability system and methodology.
Fonterra committed to invest in a full ‘trust in source’ traceability program that would deliver capability for product to be traced within three hours. Taking this a step further, they identified that having traceability within the supply chain was not sufficient, but information needed to be available at the consumer’s fingertips too, giving them complete trust and visibility of the source of their purchase.
Rekha Baptista, Traceability Center of Excellence Manager for Fonterra, stated “A parent buying infant formula for their baby must have the confidence that what they are feeding their child is completely safe. We want to connect consumers to their food, provide transparency through the supply chain, and allow them to see the origin of the food they are purchasing.”
Fonterra commenced a search and reached out to 75 potential solution providers to respond to a Request for Information (RFI). Micro Focus GPAS was ultimately selected for multiple key reasons.
- Breadth of Services – GPAS offers a range of capabilities within one overall flexible, cloud-based framework: Serialization, copy protection mechanisms, ingredient level and finished goods traceability, business intelligence services, comprehensive user- defined reporting, data analytics and blockchain services. These capabilities within one cloud-based service maximizes investment and minimizes integration and capital expenditure requirements.
- Integration Experience and Capabilities – Micro Focus is considered an industry leader in IT security software solutions helping its clients to build, operate and secure their enterprise.
- Micro Focus Global footprint – Micro Focus is one of the world’s largest enterprise software providers. We deliver mission-critical technology and supporting services that help thousands of customers worldwide manage core IT elements of their business so they can run and transform—at the same time.
- Domain Experience – GPAS Business Consultants have credible and demonstrable expertise in the traceability and supply chain domain. GPAS customers can attest to the significant value add we provide when collaboratively working with our customers to understand their business problems & challenges and to assist them to derive measurable business value from their investments.
- Enterprise-Class Service Level – The GPAS Service Level Agreement provides our clients with guaranteed service availability, 24/7 hot desk support, and full disaster recovery
About GPAS Traceability Services
GPAS maps our client’s value chain & all the product/shipment changes of custody, business processes & traceability events, securely recording all event and product at-tribute data within the GPAS database on behalf of our client. GPAS supply chain management & visualization services Extends the visibility of our client’s supply chain beyond the current ERP “Closed Supply Chain” view.
