Businesses, especially those working with other businesses in a supply chain, could benefit from a data ecosystem that provides each partner with scale-relevant data and information they need to make strategic decisions.
There are baseline tools that the terminal market needs to function efficiently. They include:
- route management – route optimization and truck dispatch, logistics and distribution optimization
- enterprise resource planning (ERP) software – inventory management, quality assurance, traceability
- ordering platforms – allows retailers to order from multiple vendors using one platform
- on-line marketplace – provides access to prices, food safety across the supply chain, matches wholesale producers to potential buyers, removes communication barriers
Nearly every segment of the supply chain indicates that information gaps, communication challenges, and transaction inefficiencies present significant hurdles to increasing the level of business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) activity within our 56 county region. The information asymmetries caused by these issues are particularly acute for small and mid-sized businesses throughout the supply chain.
Although we collect massive amounts of data within food systems from commercial firms, NGOs and through public institutions, these datasets are fragmented, incomplete, and collected from various scales of activity. Practitioners use different ways to gather and account for their activities in supply networks and rely largely on self-reporting. Partnerships between food banks, food hubs, and retailers fail to effectively share information that could help prioritize and focus our collective efforts to ensure food access.
Farmers noted that transportation is inefficient and collaboration is challenging. Transactions are difficult to settle. Logistics providers indicated it is difficult to organize profitable routes and technical barriers make it difficult to serve clients with traceability requirements. Wholesalers struggle to match supply and demand, and manage many smaller accounts rather than a few larger accounts. Retailers and restaurants also deal with transaction management concerns.
Collecting useful data and ensuring that the data management systems are “interoperable” – can talk with one another – form the core of an effective information “architecture”. To do this, a computer scientist will develop an “integration” to link one system with another. Our partnerships benefit from additional collaboration to “harmonize” data collection and management to capture food systems complexity for the benefit of all participants. The data architecture must be flexible, work at multiple scales, gather the data relevant to each partner in the supply network and be geo-referenced. Flexibility allows for both qualitative and quantitative content. Integrating data at different scales and granularities is also important.
For more information:
- “Transforming wasted food will require systemic and sustainable infrastructure innovations”. Callie W Babbitt, Roni A Neff, Brian E Roe, Sauleh Siddiqui, Celeste Chavis, Thomas A Trabold in Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Volume 54, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2022.101151
Wisconsin Food Systems, Inc. 