Applications of EPICS in food supply chain management

I'm presenting at the workshop Applications of EPICS in food supply chain management in Oslo 16. November. This workshop is based around the work done by SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture, Matis and TraceTracker (where I work) in the eTrace project. I hope to see you there if you are interested in the use of EPCIS for applications like traceability, sustainability, logistics optimization and supply chain management!

Agro based clusters and traceability

With the recent ecoli incidents in Europe I suspect it may get even worse for farmers in developing countries to sell their products. German authorities are now certain that it was locally grown products that were to blame, but the average consumer may have become more conscious that it matters where foodstuff comes from.

So what should growers of fruit and vegetables in developing countries do to secure market access?

Last weekend I read a FAO report on Agro based clusters in developing countries. I have become involved in the design of such a cluster, with focus on using electronic traceability for creating product documentation. This solution is intended to support the cluster in creating market advantages through the use of modern export and sales support technologies. But can this also be used to make the end consumer trust the products?

A pilot in the eTrace project had success with using traceability information in the dialog with consumers at the point of sale. According to the fish monger “Instead of selling just a few kilos a day, I sold more than 150 kilos over 4 days. This is a very significant increase for us.”

Can similar effects be expected if flowers, fruit and vegetables from developing countries are equipped with traceability information? And how should it be done, by printing the information on the packaging or by providing links to online solutions like this (in Norwegian)?

Tagging in Iceland

A couple of weeks ago I was in Iceland to run another RFID project. The contect was the same as this project. This time we had more tools available, like handheld RFID scanners with embedded software to compose XML for upload to the project EPCIS.


In the previous project we attached the RFID tags directly to the fish boxes, but this time we tried a different approach. The fish was stored on ice in big tubs. These were stored in a cold store, and they were wet. So instead of trying to get a piece of surface that we could fasten the tag, we attached them to handles in the corners of the tubs with the help of some extra paper tags. So here you see me, dressed up according to the rules of the processing company, giving a tub of Sebastes marinus identity.


These paper tags proved to be very convenient. As the project progressed we could take them off, make notes and so on. Of course, had the use of RFID been integrated into the production, then everything would be automatic. But this was a pilot in a type of chain that is not among the first movers. So we had to do a lot of manual operations, and then we could make notes on the tags that helped us fill in the holes in the traceability model later on.

To cover the different roles of traced items we employed both SGTIN and GRAI type RFID tags. The finished products, that were airlifted to markets in mainland Europe, were equipped with SGTINs, while the tubs with fish and similar vessels that were being used in the productions, were equipped with GRAIs. This way the proper XML can decommission the tags, so that they can be reused later without being related traceability-wise to earlier uses.