The Center for Disease Control estimates that 48 million Americans or 1 in 6 people become ill from foodborne disease. Of these 48 million Americans, 128,000 will be hospitalized for treatment and 3,000 will die of foodborne illness.
Clearwater, Fl (June 27, 2011) Supply chain software developer Datex revealed recent improvements to its warehouse management system for cold storage providers. The new tools created in the latest version of the WMS software with input from the International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses (IARW) provide greater ability to track and trace inventory and robust new tools to help prevent foodborne illness.
The Center for Disease Control estimates that 48 million Americans or 1 in 6 people become ill from foodborne disease. Of these 48 million Americans, 128,000 will be hospitalized for treatment and 3,000 will die of foodborne illness. Datex has developed three key new features in its warehouse management software to help prevent foodborne illness. One major new feature is the ability of Datex FootPrint® WMS to track and trace by ingredient, not just at the SKU, UPC or lot level. This increased level of detail will enable businesses to remove only inventory affected by specific ingredient components, limiting the scope of potential inventory loss. Product recalls occur periodically throughout each year, typically resulting in substantial inventory loss. Because manufacturers and cold storage providers have had limited means to track and trace contaminated inventory, often more inventory than necessary was discarded due to the inability to isolate and track a single product component. Historical data about the product is retained in the system, detailing each ingredient and component, making product recalls more targeted, easier and less time consuming to execute. This approach conserves inventory, time and labor resources, resulting in faster response time in retrieving contaminated inventory.
A second major new feature is the ability of the system is accelerated aging product tracking. By using this new feature, users can automatically adjust the expiration date of inventory based upon environmental conditions, such as time out of refrigeration. Typically, when inventory is removed from refrigerated storage conditions, there are limited means to adjust the expiration date, leading to potential lapse in food safety conditions. Adjusting expiration dates to accelerate product aging will provide more accurate handling of inventory according to meet food safety standards.
In addition, zone/location temperature rules can be changed with workflow in order to move product to other locations, to maintain safe storage conditions or meeting other operational needs. The system’s new focus on inventory details allows for users to switch locations in case of contamination automatically simply by specifying some fields, helping to prevent contamination and foodborne illness.
The Datex WMS maintains country of origin tracking and other details about inventory and maintains the records on an ingredient level for easy access. Inventory expiration date for a combined product can be adjusted to reflect that of the earliest expiry date to assure food safety. Also new to the Datex warehouse management system is the ability to issue multiple simultaneous holds which can be released by workflow and/or scheduled date. A robust customizable notification system has been added so that users and clients can be alerted as to the change in status of a variety of tasks and conditions. The system now has the ability to allocate inventory across multiple warehouses from one order. Other changes include material SKU transformation; inspection schedules and workflows; product aging process monitoring and temperature capture by location and SKU. The new functionality is available immediately in the latest Datex FootPrint® WMS software release 3.3.
Contact:
Laura Olson
727-571-4159
lolson@datexcorp.com
