issue 1 Checks & Controls Why companies need to take their environmental responsibility seriously and how IT can help
Total Quality Assurance Quality Control is changing...but what’s new?
2 Million Reasons for using Muddy Boots Barfoots of Botley completes its 2 millionth assessment using Greenlight technology from Muddy Boots
Let’s Get Social! To Tweet, or Not to Tweet...?
01.
Welcome Welcome to the first edition of the Muddy Boots Magazine Dear Readers, I would like to welcome you to the first edition of the Muddy Boots magazine, where we will be discussing the industry, innovation and technology. Being green was often perceived as a niche business pursuit, but as we move toward the social marketing era, with a growing demand from consumers and an increase in media exposure, a drive for a more sustainable future should be at the forefront of every company’s agenda. Many retailers and brand holders are putting in place their own standards to manage and measure their performance in this area and support the integrity of their brand. This magazine includes articles where you can learn how companies such as Unilever and M&S are putting measures and processes in place, in partnership with their supply chain, in an attempt to drive further improvements and make an impact on this challenging agenda. This issue also includes an exclusive article by Kieran Forsey, food industry business development consultant, about how Quality Control is changing in the industry and how IT is fundamental to help suppliers across the supply chain achieve Total Quality Assurance, every time. 92% of consumers agree that it is the retailers’ responsibility to ensure that their suppliers are behaving properly. Jeff Goulding, Sales Director, takes a look at what retailers and brand holders are doing to ensure that levels of control are upheld and incidents do not take place. Last but by no means least, we get social! Is there a place for tweeting in the Fresh Produce industry? Page 13 reveals all...! We’ve got a jam-packed magazine for you, so sit back and enjoy! Best wishes, Jonathan
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Jonathan Evans Managing Director Muddy Boots Software
Contents Page 3: What’s new? Latest news from Muddy Boots. Q&A with the Muddy Boots Technical Services Manager
Page 4: Fresh Thinking. Word on the Tweet and Dates for your diary Page 5,6: Why companies need to take their environmental responsibility seriously and how IT can help. Page 7,8: Barfoots of Botley completes 1,100 assessments every day using Greenlight Page 9,10: A new supply chain approach to quality control. An interview with Kieran Forsey, Business Development Consultant
Page 11: Opinion Piece, Food Safety and Hygiene Page 12: Values, Maintaining and enhancing market access in developing countries
Page 13, 14: Let’s Get Social: To Tweet or Not To Tweet...?
Got something you’d like us to discuss next time? Contact Emma Stockley on e.stockley@muddyboots.com
Next Issue
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What’s New? Muddy Boots Moves House We have finally moved into our brand new office in Phocle Green Business Park, Rosson-Wye. Built from scratch and with a host of staff incentives the new office provides the additional space needed to support our expansion over coming years. We are experiencing continued growth in demand for our products and services fuelled by a growing concern from consumers for increased visibility and transparency in the supply of products and retailers’ unrelenting drive for high quality and safe food, sustainably farmed with unambiguous traceability. In response, our teams are growing. We have introduced more Technical Support, Software Developers, Analysts and Administrative Support and the new office will cater comfortably for the expanding team at Muddy Boots HQ. Our new office has been been built in the open countryside, within the same business park as the current premises. The design supports our ethos for a work / life balance by introducing gym facilities, an outdoor dining space and a bike shelter in support of the Government Cycle To Work Scheme. The new office has been built all on one level maximising the concept of “team unit” and minimising its intrusion on the Herefordshire landscape.
Meet The Team Member... Name: Emma Tipton Job Title: Technical Services Manager
What do you enjoy most about your job? Feeling part of the cutting edge of software development and working with a fantastic team! What has been your biggest achievement so far? Extending the Technical Support team from providing support to clients during normal working hours to being able to provide 24 / 7 international support
What’s your backgound? Veterinary Science and Zoology. I’m now doing a Masters in Computing and IT Management and a Diploma in Management If you could be anything in the world, what would you Explain your job: I manage, co-ordinate and develop Muddy Boots’ Technical Services
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be? I enjoy driving my classic car and motorbikes so I’d love to be a racing driver! Although the older I get, the more safety conscious I get so I think this is highly unlikely now!
Fresh thinking Word on the
weet!
TheGrocer Food prices to rocket as population explodes asparagusman The UK has 1480 hectares of green asparagus in production. In comparison Germany has 22028ha, but 95% of it is white. TheGrocer The average Brit spends more than a month of their life in supermarket queues GrowingDirect Unless it’s a #freshproduce emergency I AM Not going on Twitter today ;o)!
Dates for your Diary To Meet Muddy Boots 16 - 18 February 2011 CIES Global Food Safety Conference, London 15 - 16 June 2011 Cereals, Peterborough 12 - 16 September 2011 HACCP, Gold Coast, Queensland If you’re attending any of these events, we’d love to catch up! Let us know on:
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sales@muddyboots.com
Fast Facts ‘Food Safety’ was mentioned twice every day in the UK national news in 2009 & 2010
‘75%
of Australians think more highly of companies that are considerate to the environment
Almost $100 billion of food is wasted in America each year
04.
58% of consumers are more likely to choose one retailer over another if they know they take their social and environmental responsibilities seriously
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05.
Lead Story
Harnessing Technology to Minimise Environmental Impact Why companies need to take their environmental responsibility seriously and how IT can help. Being ‘environmentally friendly’ was once a niche business pursuit but things are changing; consumer knowledge, expectation and media exposure means that environmental responsibility should be at the forefront of every company’s agenda. In a recent Ipsos MORI Poll it was revealed that 92% of consumers believe that it is the retailers’ responsibility to ensure that each of their suppliers around the world is behaving properly. It’s fair to say, therefore, that the years of burying our heads in the supply chain sands have long gone. According to the study, ‘58% of consumers claim that they are more likely to choose one retailer over another if they know they take their social and environmental responsibilities seriously’. Retailers and brand holders are
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subsequently faced with a huge and complex task, particularly within the fresh produce supply chain; global supply is now commonplace and factors such as large numbers of small-scale growers, diversity of geography, cultures and an increasing trend for fresh produce to be packed at source must be accounted for. When it comes to environmental responsibility, the issue of reducing waste across the entire food industry is critically important. Consumers are witnessing an increase in the price of food and yet programs like The Great British Waste Menu communicate excessive food waste as product is being rejected for being the wrong shape or size. This media exposure and incidents like the Gulf oil spill continue to raise questions around the world about the
responsibility every business carries to the customers, colleagues and communities it serves. A report by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) in the UK has put the costs associated with waste generated in the UK food and drink supply chain, and households, at around £17 billion a year; £5 billion of which comes directly from the supply chain, before the food has even reached the supermarket shelves. In tonnage, this amounts to 7.5 million tonnes, or 50% of food wasted within the supply chain every year. Not to mention the 18 million tonnes of CO2 this level of waste produces. This doesn’t sit well with the whole supply chain efficiency element or the long term sustainable agendas that many retailers are wishing to adopt.
06. The impact of this on the retailer is becoming even more significant as they continue to take ownership of the problem with own label produce. As the retailer becomes the brand, any scrutiny relating to methods of supply, availability and cost can seriously affect their reputation. To guarantee standards are being met and their brand integrity remains intact, retailers and brand holders are implementing their own standards to enable benchmarks to be set. For example Marks & Spencer has their ‘Field to Fork Assessment’ to monitor supplier behaviour, while Unilever has ‘Growing for the Future’ to measure supplier performance against their ten sustainability indicators. As part of Unilever’s campaign to highlight its sustainability credentials to consumers, they deployed the Muddy Boots Software audit management system in 2007. The software can be used to monitor areas such as social accountability, environmental impact, corporate governance, food safety, ethics and health and safety, and can be adapted to accommodate virtually any inspection protocol. Having software systems in place to consolidate data which documents geographical spreads, supplier size, waste management and the use of renewable energy can be used to identify supply chain issues and to measure the success of green initiatives. Ultimately, much like Marks & Spencer and Unilever, once a brand holder or retailer is confident about the quality of their produce, they put
themselves in the firing line and communicate this. Using technology to harness better business information throughout the supply chain is key to that drive for efficiency. Better planning and forecasting, whilst difficult, must play a significant part in this process. Accurate specifications should be communicated between the retailer, supplier and primary producers, to ensure that time, energy and cost efficient quality and quantity expectations have been met. This planning and forecasting will lead to more informed and accurate decision making which will reduce waste
and increase profit. The environmental impact of the supply chain will escalate if retailers and brand holders do not challenge these areas and the efficiency throughout their supply chain is not improved. Without this, production costs will continue to rise and there will be more price pressure. Crucially, software systems can put better check controls and work-flow controls in place to ensure that the process of rejection happens at the initial stages of the supply chain, before the environmental and financial impact of freight and packaging have been incurred.
Case Study Unilever has been working to manage its environmental impact for over a decade and they enlisted the help of Muddy Boots in 2007. The objective was to quantify suppliers’ progress against ‘Growing for the Future’; their long-standing 11-point sustainability programme. 3 years on and this is the story so far... For Unilever to achieve its ambitious growth and sustainability objectives, the company’s environmental impact had to be reduced throughout their supply chain. The key focus is sustainable supply; raw materials, production process and distribution had to be managed in-line with the company’s sustainability agenda. To achieve this goal, the audit integrity software from Muddy Boots was deployed across Unilever’s fresh produce supply chain. Loaded with the Unilever Sustainable Agriculture Code, the tool has enabled Unilever and their suppliers to create
evidence- based improvement plans. “Muddy Boots enables our suppliers to self-assess themselves against Unilever’s Code and identify good stories or areas for improvement,” explains Andrea Granier, Global Sustainability Manager Natural Ingredients, Unilever Global Supply Management. “We can spot industry trends which can be broken down by individual supplier, country and product. We are able to see what the issues are, without having to interrogate endless paperbased records. “Understanding we have to make a real difference in sustainability terms and being able to communicate this through our brand is leading us to create new ways of working with our suppliers. “We aim to have 300 suppliers on board by the end of 2012,” concludes Granier.
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Breaking News 1,100 Quality Assessments Completed Every day using Greenlight Barfoots of Botley has completed more than 2 million assessments since implementing Muddy Boots
Barfoots, which has significant fresh produce operations specialising in the growing and packing of sweetcorn and semi-exotic produce, was faced with increased requirements from retailers and organisations to demonstrate traceability and quality assurance of certified produce. The company needed a robust, manageable quality assurance system to facilitate their daily audits and assessments. Subsequently, Muddy Boots Software, leaders in traceability and quality assurance solutions for sustainable food and farming,
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was implemented, providing an opportunity for Barfoots to review current practices and identify areas of change that could yield process improvements and embed control points to preserve the integrity of the product.
“
onsibility every business carries
Improvements are now always being made it serves.
“
Sweetcorn specialist, Barfoots of Botley, has just completed its 2 millionth assessment using Greenlight technology from Muddy Boots Software. Since the implementation in 2005 nearly 1,100 assessments have been successfully completed every day; with significant improvements and efficiencies ‘always being made’.
“When dealing with fresh produce, constant improvements and efficiencies have to be delivered and better quality results in less work and less cost. “Since the introduction of Muddy Boots across our supply base, improvements are always being
made,” claims Justin Creasy, Technical Director at Barfoots of Botley. “One of the biggest industry concerns is Emergency Product Withdrawal’s (EPW’s) through careless label management; this is potentially business threatening. Therefore, a system like this, which is capable of reducing the risk of label failure, is a huge improvement. The big advantage of Muddy Boots is knowing that the information is correct and therefore that the security in the audited label is ‘safe to release’. I believe that the company’s Greenlight label check assurance is the ultimate solution for this. “Electronic systems, like Greenlight from Muddy Boots, are much easier to police and since implementing the software we have witnessed
08. better organisation within our supply base and a more empowered workforce. “Members of staff and suppliers are continuously supported by the system and we can quickly identify the number of checks that a particular supplier has carried out and the accuracy of these assessments. It is now simple for us to recognise the best performing suppliers and because of this our suppliers are encouraged to take ownership of their responsibilities. “This data has enabled us to put improvement plans in place to promote continuous development. Any supplier that is not meeting their objectives is able to use Greenlight technology to establish where the problem lies and hopefully put preventative measures in place for continuous improvement gains,” concludes Creasy. Jonathan Evans says the level of assessments completed by Barfoots is testament to the simplicity of the software; “Over the past 5 years Barfoots has demonstrated their ability to utilise the capabilities of Greenlight to add efficiency and cost gains. Completing their 2 millionth assessments not only reflects the reliability of the software but also demonstrates how their growers and suppliers have embraced Muddy Boots.”
What is Greenlight? The Greenlight suite of products represents significant advances in how quality management and traceability data is captured and managed. Greenlight Quality Control: A mobile and web based Product and Facility Quality Control system to manage conformance to product specifications and process management. Greenlight Supplier Exchange: A web based communication exchange between suppliers and growers to manage the status and process of supplier approvals and compliance to market standards. Greenlight Track and Trace: A pack-house management system that manages raw material intake and production control to final product; delivering full traceability history to source site. Greenlight Grower Management: A web based Grower record system for crop and field based activity records, for managing large numbers of individual growers.
For further information on the Greenlight suite of products or any of the Muddy Boots product portfolio, visit our website www.muddyboots.com or call us on +44 (0)1989 780540. Muddy Boots’ Adrian Talbot, presenting Kamil Krasoski and Freddie Siepak from Barfoots with champagne in recognition of two million quality assessments using Greenlight.
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09.
Article
Total Quality Assurance A new supply chain approach to Quality Control. An Article by Kieran Forsey, Business Development Consultant, Food Industry, investigates. For many, quality control is about the quality of goods at intake and dispatch. You know the quality of goods received and if these fall short of the mark, the goods are not accepted and the problem remains with the supplier. Once the goods are accepted, some added value is applied and the quality of the finished products are checked and if they pass, they are shipped, invoiced and hopefully paid and the transaction is complete.
provide the necessary reassurance of absolute product quality, every time; a practice referred to as Total Quality Assurance. This means that, in addition to the product being checked at the point of dispatch, all associated people, processes and facilities are continually assessed and reassessed to ensure the product is in the best possible state at the point of dispatch each and every time; guaranteeing consistent quality.
Most accounting/production management systems (often referred to as ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning) will offer this basic capability. So what’s new?
Secondly and perhaps most importantly, is the concept of the Active Quality Chain which is currently being adopted by the most advanced grocery retailers.
Driven by the needs of retailers, two major initiatives are taking route and these are set to change the face of conventional quality control.
In their relentless pursuit for efficiency and quality throughout their supply chains, retailers are recognising that if everyone in the supply chain adopts Total Quality Assurance, significant cost efficiencies can be found by sharing reliable quality and due diligence information further up the supply chain.
Firstly, there is new, higher level of expectation on suppliers to provide documented evidence of complete ‘product due diligence’ and to
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By adopting this holistic and new supply chain approach, quality control data can be made visible throughout the supply chain in a consistent and reusable format. This way of working allows the receiver of goods to remove (or certainly reduce) key quality control checks at intake in favour of visibility of the supplier’s quality control checks at dispatch. To participate in this new dynamic system, suppliers and manufacturers must adopt Total Quality Assurance in their own companies and open up their quality control, assessment and audit information for external scrutiny. It can be a scary thought if you imagine some of the less than acceptable practices of our industry, such as poor health and safety standards, lax hygiene, use of untrained labour or poor work practices. Some might say these are things of the past which of course,
10. may be true and if so this is very encouraging. However, the food supply chains from the retailer down need to be ready to provide clear and regular visibility that good practices are prospering and product due diligence is consistent and unquestioned. Conventional production quality controls on their own are insufficient to meet these new rigorous demands from retailers. By adopting Total Quality Assurance throughout the supply chain everyone wins: • • •
Greenlight is aimed at assisting with business critical processes, as well as basic quality control. It can drive and measure continuous improvement and can be used to create key metrics to positively differentiate business performance. Total Quality Assurance works on the basis that a Company is only as good as the weakest or poorest performing part. With Greenlight executives can gain a deep insight into all aspects of their business
and promote positive quality control. With Total Quality Assurance and Active Quality Chain, everyone has complete visibility of what’s working well, to enable active learning, and what’s not working, to allow appropriate changes and improvements. This drives continuous improvement throughout the Company and the supply chain.
The consumer is happy and spends more Retailers are happy as product sales increase and footfall grows Suppliers are happy as sales increase
Muddy Boots Software is actively engaged with retailers to ensure Greenlight meets all of their Active Quality Chain requirements. To address these changes, suppliers and manufacturers need to rethink their approach to quality management and recognise their position and responsibility to the whole supply chain. Adopting this software provides a complete platform to help suppliers implement the necessary steps to ensure product due diligence and move towards being a pro-active player in the new Active Quality Chain of their retailers.
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Opinion Piece
Food Safety & Hygiene Muddy Boots’ Sales Director, Jeff Goulding, discusses why suppliers and retailers need better visibility of their supply chains.
“ of consumers 92%
onsibility every business carries
agree that it is the retailers’ responsibility to ensure that their suppliers are behaving properly
“
Suppliers and Retailers need better visibility and efficiency throughout their supply chain in order to help them align their offer to multiple markets. Ultimately, suppliers need to be able to prove that they are working in-line with compliance regulations. When it comes to the food we eat, freshness, tastiness, value for money and safety are all prerequisites and every incident,
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particularly within the fresh produce industry, can seriously jeopardise the trust of the end customer. Software solutions need to play an essential part for the industry and can ensure that levels of control are improved and incidents do not take place. After all, control means confidence in the supply chain. To guarantee consumer needs are being met, compliance systems need to be put in place; offering transparency and visibility of what is often a complex supply chain. This is essential for the process of quality control and addresses the need to be able to locate the origin and cause of a food quality problem quickly. Clients should be able to demonstrate that they have due diligence systems in place and their ethical, ecological and food safety credentials should be easily accessible. Modern
audit
management
software uses mobile technology to capture data, which is then uploaded into a database. The programme can detect when and where problems occurred and whether any corrective measures can be taken. Fundamentally, if there is a contamination problem with one supplier’s batch of pineapples, correct auditing and assessments can map the supply chain and highlight who supplied the contaminated produce. Therefore, the source of a problem can be identified and rectified quickly. If Retailers do not challenge these areas or improve the efficiency throughout their supply chain, the problem of wastage and food recalls within the supply chain will escalate; leading to an increase in production costs and more price pressure. As a result, Retailers and Suppliers have identified with this and are engaged in putting better business controls in place.
Values
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Maintaining & Enhancing Market Access in Developing Countries Jonathan Evans was invited to speak at the Catholic Relief Services ‘Information and Communications Technology for Development’ Conference in Washington DC last year. Here are some of the key extracts. Jonathan discussed the fundamental issue of maintaining and enhancing market access for the large numbers of small scale producers in developing countries, to help sustain their livelihoods. We are never far away from the next food scare and retailers and brand holders are becoming increasingly nervous about the risks associated with bad publicity and the impact this will have on their brand. The result of this is more compliance and greater due diligence on suppliers and growers who need to deliver greater visibility and transparency of their supply chains. Muddy Boots’ focus is on working with and supporting with I.T., the produce companies, co-operatives and exporters that source from small growers. However it is not without its challenges and the added compliance pressure is making it increasingly difficult.
The issues within the industry in the developing world are compounded by some fundamental issues;
PC’s. Inevitably, the challenge is producing this level of visibility when there is a lack of I.T. and literacy skills, as is the case for many • Economic viability of small growers in developing areas. growers is undermined by a lack of knowledge of production The new fibre-optic cables that techniques and associated costs have just been laid across the • Poor crop planning and record continent will start to improve keeping by growers connectivity. With the support • Unreliability of quantity and of DFID, who are aiming to quality of produce from these have 4000 digital villages in growers; shortage of orders is a the near future, we can constant problem consider trialing the web-based • Trust issues through poor applications of our field transparency of payment systems data sheets when the • The logistics and cost of managing infrastructure is in place. This will audits result in improved timeliness of record keeping; giving the Technology is essential to help grower potential ownership of his businesses manage their growers or her own record keeping system. more efficiently and capture the essential data to meet the market The data is key to the many requirements. Much of that starts produce and export companies with better grower records that in helping businesses need to identify who the grower is, understand the dynamics what they grow and all other field and safety of their supply, but also based activities, such as pesticide the performance of their growers and fertiliser usage and the costs and areas where they can support involved, without which their their growers become more viable economic viability is difficult to and, in the long term, more ascertain. sustainable. It is estimated that our systems are used Our PC & mobile based systems to cover 7,000 growers in are now widely used in Kenya with Kenya &Tanzania. Clearly changes medium sized growers who have are taking place.
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13.
Let’s Get Social
To Tweet or Not To Tweet What does the #freshproduce industry have to gain from virtual interaction? Networking opportunities, reputation management, customer engagement, advertising and market research are all free and at the tip of your fingers within the new social marketing era. It begs the question therefore, why would any business not be tweeting? Social sites are changing the way people do business. News channels now refer to Twitter or Facebook as a valid source of information and the rise in the number of people adding #socialmediafail to their C.V. is also growing. HR professionals are using these services to manage staff members and wives are using social networking to spy on their husbands! But, what role can social media play in the world of Fruit and Veg…? In the last 5 days (up to writing this article) ‘fresh produce’ was mentioned more than 1,200 times on Twitter; 93 Tweets mentioned ‘Food Certification’; 804 people were Tweeting about ‘Sustainable Food’, in the last 3 days, 1,600 Tweeters have been debating ‘Food Safety’ and 56 tweets have mentioned
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the ‘Food Safety Conference’. product and ultimately sell some goods. Wholesaler Makro is a great example of a company that is Many Retailers are exposing embracing social media in all its themselves and their brand glory. 2,180 people are ‘following’ through social sites. For many, the company’s Tweets and 1,549 the connotations associated with people are fans of the Makro Customer Service would be a big Facebook group. To engage with queue of unhappy customers in its customers, Makro launched the Supermarket or waiting in a free Twitter promotion called a call queue trying to speak to ‘Tweet a Price’, where ‘followers’ a representative on the phone. were invited to buy products Customer Service can evoke many at a significantly reduced price. negative emotions; so, sending your customers to a social site Following on from the success of which your company is able to the campaign, Makro launched manage and monitor and where ‘Tag the Deal’, the first campaign your customers can express of its kind, where customers are their thoughts in no more than invited to tag themselves on the 140 characters instantaneously, company’s Facebook page for a sounds genius to me! chance to win ovens, toasters, dinner sets and more. Both These Customer Service Twitter campaigns were a fast-paced accounts are full of Tweets and free way to advertise their about mouldy bags of apples or
14. squashed plums; this level of exposure can be crippling for a company if it’s not managed in the correct way, but responding quickly and transparently can help maintain the integrity of your brand. Yes, the company is exposing itself but isn’t this the beauty? The level of honesty and the instant interaction with your customers can significantly reduce a problem that could have easily escalated. For many, the idea of using Twitter to interact with colleagues and customers seems slightly juvenile but unlike Facebook, a recent Nielson study has revealed that the age group making the most of Twitter is 3549 years, with this demographic amounting to 42% of all Twitter
traffic. Much like the Blackberry (an acceptable form of business communication), Twitter enables you to be contactable in an informal way, even when you’re not actually contactable at all! So, how has the @MuddyBootsLtd Twitter account worked for us? We’ve been Tweeting for 6 months now and in that time we have gained significant momentum. We have been invited to contribute to the Fresh Produce Journal’s live Twitter
B dy
debate, invited to attend key industry events via Twitter, the majority of our industry news intake is fed to us directly from our favourite Twitter sources and, most importantly, our customers have told us they love our twitter feed! The questions we must ask ourselves however are, Does it make any money? Does it have any business value? We’ll let you know in 6 months...
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...your partner for good
Muddy Boots Software Ltd t: +44 (0)1989 780540 e: sales@muddyboots.com Contact details for our worldwide offices can be found at www.m udd yboots.com