Outbreak (no, not the Dustin Hoffman flick)

You want to know how ERP affects you in daily life? Check out the Junction Solutions white paper entitled “Tracing the Genealogy of an Outbreak.” (Sensitive or nauseous readers probably will want to skip not only this particularly entry, but the white paper as a whole.)

Using the simile of researching family genealogy (hence the title), paper author Nick Bova seeks to illustrate the difficulties facing food processors who for one reason or another must trace product back to its source. Said investigation can require “tracing the lot back through handwritten ledgers to the grower, block, field, etc.”

Naturally, in the Information Age, certain errors can lead to horror stories: “all it takes is one zero that looks like a six in one entry to send the entire investigation in the wrong direction…”

With proper methods of data collection and storage, argues “Outbreak,” most headache-inducing labor and mistakes can be avoided. When such a long-ranging ERP system is in place, lots can be traced back to the source in four minutes or less.

The author also sees problems in the nature of industrial food processing. Since “A typical day’s run in a high-speed environment may involve numerous batches of the same types of ingredients, with the next batch being added to the previous one without stopping production. … it is unlikely the machinery will be cleaned between runs, as that would be inefficient and unnecessary under normal circumstances. In short, after awhile you can’t tell where one batch ends and the next begins.” Ick.

Because of this sort of issue, argues the paper, even conventional ERP systems may not be enough to prevent efficient recall of potentially dangerous product.

Towards the end of “Outbreak,” the ‘paper briefly touches upon “the risks of bioterrorism affecting the food chain.” As though you weren’t sold already, eh?