Foodservice Industry Adopts Data Synchronization
Over the summer a group of foodservice distributors, manufacturers and restaurant operators gathered together to discuss the adoption of GS1 standards for product identification, location identification and data synchronization. A collection of 55 founding members of the GS1 Foodservice Initiative created a voluntary road map for the adoption of standards in the foodservice industry and a governance and working group to guide the implementation and ensure that foodservice business requirements are addressed by the standards.
At the invitation of IFDA, IFMA and GS1, approximately 120 CEO’s and Supply Chain Leads of major foodservice distributors, manufacturers and operators met in Chicago this past July. Aligntrac attended a portion of the proceedings and we were impressed by the statements of support for the initiative. It was apparent that the foodservice industry has for years struggled with proprietary product identification schemes and proprietary mechanisms for obtaining product data and that the group had concluded that the only way that foodservice could succeed in bringing efficiencies, critical mass and trusted data was by the industry-wide adoption of open standards. Several distributors expressed their current challenges in meeting their customers’ expectations for product information and the critical need for the initiative to move forward.
The foodservice initiative is an all encompassing project that aims to transform the foodservice supply chain with the same supply chain standards used for decades in the retail supply chain. The initiative includes the assignment of GTINs, use of barcodes in shipping and receiving, and Global Data Synchronization for the synchronization of product information between manufacturers, distributors and operators. As many foodservice manufacturers have been using these standards on the retail side of their business, the initiative is simply leveraging existing investments in standards, processes and infrastructure that these companies made long ago.
The voluntary roadmap sets an industry timeline for GTIN adoption, barcode scanning of inbound and outbound shipments and data synchronization. The roadmap sets out a general set of targets and milestones for the industry. Individual distributors and operators are launching initiatives that generally intersect the roadmap, although as with any roadmap there will be distributors who choose to lead the timelines so that they can accelerate their realization of the benefits.
The working group has outlined a two-phase approach to data synchronization. Phase One focuses on logistics-oriented data attributes and is very similar to the data attributes currently being exchanged with retailers. Phase Two provides marketing and nutritional information to allow distributors to better market products and to provide operators and dietitians with improved information to make product selections.
Manufacturers who supply Dot Foods or the Premier healthcare alliance are beginning to see requests for participation in data synchronization. More distributor announcements are expected shortly.