XML in Traceability Systems for Food Supply Chain

Abstract

The most recent hardware and software developments from the information and communication technology domain generate a significant influence over the business environment. An important influence is generated over the companies involved in supply chain due to the interaction of different organizations; a special approach must be taken into consideration for food supply chain because the food safety and quality represent a very sensitive problem. This paper will present a general overview of the food safety and XML main issues and will describe how XML can be used in food traceability systems. Conclusions and future directions of the research are discussed. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Headnote

Abstract

The most recent hardware and software developments from the information and communication technology domain generate a significant influence over the business environment. An important influence is generated over the companies involved in supply chain due to the interaction of different organizations; a special approach must be taken into consideration for food supply chain because the food safety and quality represent a very sensitive problem. This paper will present a general overview of the food safety and XML main issues and will describe how XML can be used in food traceability systems. Conclusions and future directions of the research are discussed.

Keywords: food supply chain, food traceability systems, XML, information systems

JEL Classification: D23, D83, L2, M15

(ProQuest: ... denotes formula omitted.)

Introduction

The most recent hardware and software developments from the information and communication technology (ICT) domain generate a significant influence over the business environment, consequently over the business-to-business or business-to-consumer relationships. An important influence is generated over the companies involved in supply chain due to the interaction of different organizations, each one having his own information system and performing its value-added activities (Makris et al., 2008) and often they are part of an inter-organizational information system (IOIS). An IOIS contains a workflow that involves communication between al least two organizations having different information systems (Aalst and Kumar, 2003), therefore is necessary to have the same approach for sharing or to electronically exchanging data or information between those systems. Electronic data interchange (EDI) was one of the first technologies used to conduct e-business transactions and still is and probably will remain for many years from now the most used technology in IOIS (Narayama et al., 2009).

A special approach must be taken into consideration for food supply chain because the food safety and quality represent a major concern for governments, consumers and companies from agriculture and food industry (Antle, 1999; Beulens et al., 2005; Folinas et al., 2006; Wolfert et al., 2010). The first step for certifying food safety and quality is represented by the existence of internal food traceability system for each actor from the food supply chain and the most advanced step is represented by traceability IOIS for food supply chain. In European Union the concept of food safety has an integrated approach and is refers to "aims to assure a high level of food safety, animal health, animal welfare and plant health within the European Union through coherent farm-to-table measures and adequate monitoring, while ensuring the effective functioning of the internal market".

This paper will present a general overview of the food safety and XML main issues and will describe how XML can be used in food traceability systems.

1. Food safety and food traceability systems

Due to the fact that in last two decades the agriculture and food industry were faced with some minor or major scandals there were some consequences (Pinto et al., 2006):

* Many governments have started to adopt and implement much stricter regulations regarding food safety in order provide a healthy food and consequently to improve quality of life for their citizens (Ignat, 2011)

* Consumers have started to be more carefully when they buying food, to seek for certifications that guarantee the food quality and to require supplementary information regarding purchased food.

* Major producers, processors and distributors have started to enhance their business relationships by creating private sector bodies or non-governmental organizations that design, build and validate the implementation of voluntary standards in order to certify agricultural product, food obtained by agricultural production processes and to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and visibility of food supply chain globally and across sectors. According to Cho and Hooker (2009) in the last years the process of design, build and implement of food safety and quality standards has received an increase attention from all actors from food supply chain. The evolution of standards was, is and will be according with consumers concerns and regulations developments of governments, also, standards being used by companies as a competitive advantage (Henson and Reardon, 2005), because one of the main challenges in the current economic and financial context is to determine consumers to buy their products (Pelau, 2011).

Certifying the fulfillment quality standards for any foodstuffs provided by companies represents the main goal of regulations and standards to (Antle, 1999), but even if all procedures and assessments specified in standards or regulations are fully implemented, there is no guarantees that is a zero probability to show up unforeseen situations that might determine obtaining unsafe food for human consumption.

A key point for all food safety and quality standards and regulations is represented by food traceability. According to article 2 from the Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 January 2002, the term of food traceability represents "the ability to trace and follow a food, feed, food-producing animal or substance intended to be, or expected to be incorporated into a food or feed, through all stages of production, processing and distribution". Consequently, any food traceability system must allow a full log of the history and all locations along the supply chain for any food products (Dabbene and Gay, 2011) and represents a tool that can be used to reinforce a high level of coordination between farmers, processors, distributors, and retailers (Ràbade and Alfaro, 2006), in other words, can be assimilated with the step in building inter-organization information systems at the food supply chain level.

According to Arienzo et al. (2008) food traceability systems can be grouped in three categories: (i) internal traceability systems - systems implemented by each company from supply chain in order to record food internal traceability; (ii) one step back, one step forward systems - are an extension of internal traceability systems, supplementary being recorded data and information regarding the sources and destinations for resources used; (iii) chain traceability systems - the most complete and complex systems, being an interorganizational information system which include all actors of the food supply chain.

2. XML and food traceability systems

Barrett and Konsynski (1982) consider that the increase of organizational performances by reducing costs and increasing productivity represents the main scope of IOIS. The usages of electronic data interchange as a method to data between organizational information systems without human intervention (Nurmilaakso, 2008) will determine both cost reduce and productivity increase. Leonard and Cronan (2003) emphasized the importance of electronic data interchange in the supply chain management and over provider-customer relationships.

Lenz et al. (2007) consider that one of main obstacles in the process of design, build and implement interoperable communication networks is represented by the heterogeneous information systems that are included in an IOIS, another important obstacle being represented by social and organizational factors (Pirnejad et al., 2008).

XML is derived from Standardized Generalized Markup Language (SGML) developed by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) which is derived from Standardized Markup Language (SML) developed by IBM and can be used for displaying data in web browser or for electronic data interchange between organizational information systems (Woolman, 2001). According to Harold (2002) XML can be considered as being "a set of rules for defining semantic tags that break a document into parts and identify the different parts of the document. It is a meta-markup language that defines a syntax in which other field-specific markup languages can be written". Any XML message can be followed by a XML schema in which can specified rules, elements, and data types which provide XML a great flexibility. Alhajj and Polat (2005) consider that XML will become a standard for electronic data interchange; therefore many researches will be focused on this topic.

Because XML is very flexible, allowing to be defined and added as many elements (tags) as is needed (Aalst and Kumar, 2003), practically are offered an unlimited number of possibilities to develop structure that can be used for electronic data interchange. An example for a fragment of XML Schema for and XML document that can be used for EDI when a food batch is transferred between two companies is presented below.

...

In figure 1 is presented a general architecture for food supply chain in which are included all relevant actors according to Thakur et al. (2011): farmers, processors, distributors, and retailers.

Using XML for electronic data interchange, companies from food supply chain can decrease considerable the necessary time for exchanging data, reduce to minimum the possibility of human errors in the process of input data and significantly reduce the costs associated with this activity. In the same time, a national database can be uploaded with data and information that can be used either for informing consumers or to quickly identify where are located food batches that does not respect the standards for human consumption and must be pull out of the market.

Conclusions

In order to guarantee food safety and quality and to reduce considerable the response time of governmental organization during food safety crises, it is necessary to be implemented food chain traceability systems. The electronic data interchange between farmers, processors, distributors, retailers and governmental organization must be done taking into consideration interoperability of information systems.

A direct approach for increasing consumers trust in acquired food is to provide supplementary information by Internet, using a web server that can have read-only access to the database updated with data by actors from food supply chain.

Acknowledgement

This work was co-financed from the European Social Fund through Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources Development 2007-2013, project number POSDRU /89/1.5/S/59184 "Performance and excellence in postdoctoral research in Romanian economics science domain".

References

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