2009 – The Year of the Product Recall for Food Processors

For the food and beverage industry, 2009 was the year of the product recall. With widely-publicized food recalls that ranged from peanuts and pistachios to pre-packaged refrigerated cookie dough, food and beverage manufacturers and distributors were left with little choice but to find food processing software solutions to facilitate improved lot tracking and traceability for raw ingredients and finished goods. Furthermore, with the launch of the FDA’s reportable food registry program to report potential food-borne illness threats, food processors and distributors large and small were forced to respond to tighter regulatory compliance requirements as well as customer demands for improved product traceability and more adequate quality inspection reporting.

To respond to such FDA, USDA, and customer requirements, businesses turned to food manufacturing and food distribution software packages, such as TGI’s Enterprise 21 ERP, as potential solutions that could deliver the lot tracking, quality control processing, and customer relationship management capabilities needed to meet such demands. In the case of TGI’s Enterprise 21 ERP software, Enterprise 21 delivers fully-integrated warehouse management, inventory control, order management, shipping, receiving, lot tracking and traceability, manufacturing management, quality assurance processing, and financial management. As a result of such functionality, TGI customers are able to track raw ingredient lot numbers and their receipt dates into inventory from suppliers, which raw ingredient lot numbers were used in each manufacturing run, the lot numbers of finished goods that were produced for each manufacturing run, and the lot numbers of finished goods that were then shipped to end customers. They are then able to gain visibility to the complete history of an ingredient’s lot number from receipt into inventory, consumption in manufacturing, and shipment to customers. Should a product recall need to be initiated, food processors and distributors are then able to recall all products that were produced with a contaminated raw ingredient lot with more pinpointed precision rather than having to recall all products that were produced with a given ingredient over some estimated range of manufacturing dates.

TGI is committed to further enhancing its Enterprise 21 ERP application as food processing and distribution industry requirements and government compliance regulations continue to evolve over time.