9 Traceability Tools To Keep You Compliant
July 24, 2014 
Traceability starts in the field. To maintain compliance with the Produce Traceability Initiative, growers are required to document harvest time. Photo credit: Lance Cheung, USDA.
With the mounting food safety requirements and increasingly stricter standards from retailers, traceability is not an option for growers wanting to stay competitive in the market.
The Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) is an effort designed to help the industry effectively use current traceback procedures while striving to achieve standardized electronic traceability across the
supply chain.
Many major retailers, including Walmart and Costco, already require PTI labels on cases, and Whole Foods will require PTI labeling on all cases by Sept 1.
What follows are 9 traceability tools, from software and apps to entire data collection systems, to help you make sure your traceability plan is covered from field to fork.
1. Linkfresh
Linkfresh ERP technology tracks and traces all aspects of a product’s journey from planting and harvest, to raw material intake, production, to where it goes when it leaves the packing house.The technology is PTI compliant and offers Global Trade Item Number (GTIN)/PTI barcodes; automatic and promo pricing; case, lot, and pallet tracking; electronic data interchange; inventory control; and mobile technology.
From Virtual One, Fresh QC provides traceability from each individual package to the picker in the field, integrating data collection, traceback, and payroll capabilities. Data such as grower, field, picker, time of harvest, variety, planting date, and more, is stored electronically. FireTag is a laser marking system that burns a PTI-compliant mark including a G21-128 barcode on each case, minimizing human input.
Vision33 is an SAP Business One provider that offers technology to streamline and optimize production, packaging, inventory, and warehouse management; provide access to accurate, real-time data for complete supply chain visibility; track all warehouse movements, forward, backward, and on demand; enable easy-to-perform mock recalls; and meet all requirements for batch management, quality control, and shelf-life management. The technology also enables growers to create labels for warehouse locations/bin locations, cases and crates, and production and processing.
4. KiSS
N2N Global’s Knowledge integrated Software Suite (KiSS) gives growers the opportunity to address all facets of their businesses through one platform. KiSS is PTI compliant and includes a module allowing users to track data by employee, data function, field, farm role, and responsibility. The software provides complete traceability and visibility from harvesting to final transportation and all aspects in between.
We R Food Safety offers software solutions that cater to the current regulatory environment. Software features include wizards to help write food safety programs, self-audits, automated pre-shipment review, automated traceback, recall management, custom food safety alerts, and customized real-time reporting across multiple locations.
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Redline Solutions is a whole-chain traceability solution for produce growers, packers, and shippers offering PTI compliance. Redline offers barcode traceability software solutions; barcode technology hardware including scanners and printers, rugged mobile computers, and handheld devices; wireless infrastructure; and PTI labels and supplies.
7. VistaTrac
Schoneman’s VistaTrac provides traceability and data collection systems that include labeling, shipping and receiving, real-time inventory, raw materials tracking, and can be integrated with existing accounting systems. A barcoding and scanning system allows users to easily keep track of inventory, and offers catch-weight labeling, fixed-weight labeling, Julian Date or custom lot numbers, batch numbers, serial numbers, and palletizing and warehouse locations.
8. Smarttrax Go
The Smarttrax Go from Locus Trax is a single-use, pocket-sized temperature and/or location monitoring device that notifies growers in real time via eMail of temperature abuse to their shipments as well as destination arrival time. A wireless temperature sensor goes inside the shipment, and a communication module mounts outside the shipment to capture GPS location information, read and capture the temperature sensor data, and transmit all of that information, in real-time, from the road.
9. HarvestMark
HarvestMark offers multiple traceability solutions including their item-level traceability software, HarvestMark for Items, which traces product from the seed to the retailer, and HarvestMark PTI solutions, which helps growers achieve PTI compliance. Benefits of the HarvestMark PTI solutions include innovative machine vision, which recognizes box markings on side, top, or front panels without slowing down the packing line. The HarvestMark technology is easy to integrate, has a small footprint, and can switch between different commodities or lots in seconds.
For more information on the Produce Traceability Initiative, including 7 PTI milestones go to www.producetraceability.org.
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