Modeling and implementation of the vegetable supply chain traceability system

Food Control 30 (2013) 341e353

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Food Control journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodcont

Modeling and implementation of the vegetable supply chain traceability system Jinyou Hu a, Xu Zhang a, Liliana Mihaela Moga b, c, *, Mihaela Neculita b a

College of Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, PR China Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Dunarea de Jos University of Galati, 47 Domneasca Street, 800008 Galati, Romania c The Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest,6 Piata Romana Street, Romania b

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 6 February 2012 Received in revised form 21 June 2012 Accepted 22 June 2012

In a traceability system, a large and dynamic group of participants must be identified. The identification of information to be recorded represents the most important requirement for developing an effective traceability system. The information identified during the transport and processing of vegetables is often lost and inaccurate. In this paper, a system approach is used in order to develop a methodology for the implementation of the vegetable supply chain traceability. First of all, the main discussed issues emerge at various abstraction levels throughout the elaboration of traceability systems. Secondly, a Unified Modeling Language model is introduced for traceability along with a set of suitable patterns. A series of Unified Modeling Language class diagrams is developed in order to conceive a method for modeling the product, process, and quality information in the vegetable supply chain. Then will be discussed the adequate technological standards for setting out, registering, as well as for enabling the business collaborations. Finally, a traceability system implementation will be shown through a case study on vegetable supply chains and a comparison with European Union’s General Food Law. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Traceability system Supply chain European law Vegetable User requirement Information modeling Unified Modeling Language

1. Introduction Consumers all over the world have encountered various food safety and health issues over the recent years. This led to a growing interest in developing systems for food supply chain traceability (Carriquiry & Babcock, 2007; Folinas, Manikas, & Manos, 2006). The consumer lays an increasing emphasis on safety, high quality and sustainability of food products. At the same time, the agricultural sector has undergone a considerable change during the past century. New farming practices, as well as modern handling and processing techniques have been thought out in order to meet the increasing consumer demand for a reliable, consistent and safe supply of various food products. Furthermore, the consumer experiences as regards the food safety and health issues, together with a larger demand for high quality food and feed products have resulted in a growing interest in developing systems to support the food traceability efforts (Thakur & Hurburgh, 2009). The traceability in the food supply chains has gained a considerable importance over the past few years. Various food safety and traceability laws have been implemented in several countries (Thakur & Donnelly, 2010). European Union’s General Food Law

* Corresponding author. Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Dunarea de Jos University of Galati, 47 Domneasca Street, 800008 Galati, Romania. Tel.: þ40 753 097 003. E-mail address: [email protected] (L.M. Moga). 0956-7135/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2012.06.037

entered into force on the 1st of January, 2005. The law included significant items such as the rules on the traceability and withdrawal of dangerous food products from the market. According to the European Union Law, the traceability is defined as the “ability to track any food, feed, food-producing animal or substance that will be used for consumption, through all stages of production, processing and distribution” (Official Journal of the European Communities, 2002). The Chinese Food Safety Law has also been implemented on 28th of February, 2009. It is “a risk-management tool that allows food business operators or authorities to withdraw or recall products which have been identified as unsafe” (Food Production and Management, 2009, chap. 4). Moreover, the ISO 22005 Food Traceability Standard requires that each company should know who is its immediate supplier and to whom is the product sent, according to the principle of “one-up and one-down”. It states that: “food safety is the joint responsibility of all the actors involved” (International Organization for Standardization, 2007). Thus, all the actors involved in the food supply chain are required to store the necessary information related to the food product that links inputs with outputs, so that when demanded, the information could be provided to the food inspection authorities in due time. In order to achieve a fully traceable supply chain, it is important to develop systems both for the chain traceability and for the internal traceability (Porto, Arcidiacono, & Cascone, 2011). More precisely, the output unit and the specific input unit are connected within a complete chain.

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Each supply chain actor should have an internal record keeping system that would enable him to trace back their ingredients and track forward the products so as to determine the cause of the problem or to effectively recall the associated (or contaminated) food products. Each actor must be able to trace back and trace forward the product information based on the “one-up and onedown” principle. However, the development of a traceability system is a complex undertaking as it involves all the stages of production, the handling, storage, processing, transportation and distribution (Thakur & Hurburgh, 2009). Nevertheless, in a traceability system, each unit/batch of a component or product must be both traceable and traceable. One of the biggest challenges of the supply chain traceability is the exchange of information in a standardized format between various links of the chain. To facilitate the electronic interchange of such information related to the product, international, non-proprietary standards are required as those emphasized by Jansen-Vullers, Van Dorp, & Beulens (2003). For a better analysis of the material flow, information flow and information loss in the food supply chain, a well-proven method of process mapping was conceived for the structured investigation of the material and information flow within a food manufacturing company or a whole supply chain (Olsen & Aschan, 2010). However, by modeling, the information transmission can be more clearly stated, such as: a series of Unified Modeling Language (UML) models was used for traceability and a set of suitable patterns for encoding the generic traceability semantics (Bechini, Cimino, Marcelloni, & Tomasi, 2008); a UML class diagram was developed to represent a method for modeling the product, process, quality and transformation information at any link in the bean value chains (Thakur & Donnelly, 2010); and furthermore, it was also applied to the UML for modeling the traceability system in the bulk grain supply chain, the case diagram for information exchange between the supply chain actors. A sequence diagram was drawn up to show the information exchange in the grain supply chain when a user requests additional information about a suspect product (Thakur & Hurburgh, 2009). From the above study we can conclude: the development of data management systems for the purpose of facilitating the product traceability in food supply chains has gained a significant importance in the past years. Vegetables, grains and livestock have their own characteristics. The differences among them are synthesized in Table 1. The ability to track and trace the individual product units depends on an efficient supply chain traceability system which in turn depends on both the internal data management systems and the information exchange between the supply chain actors. To enable an effective electronic information exchange, the work should be carried out on a sector-specific level. The standardized lists for data elements that can be included in the data models have been acknowledged as a key technology for resolving the data exchange. The main focus of the paper is the form of cooperation among the growers and middlemen. This cooperation form of growers with middlemen signifies the main supply chain, having the highest representation in China. It is presented a systematic approach for implementing the traceability in a vegetable supply

Table 1 Comparison of the traceability critical information among vegetables, grain and livestock supply chain. Product

Retention time

Data recording

Amount of data

Storage temperature

Vegetables Grain Livestock

Shorter Longer The longest

Batch Large batch Individual

Larger Large The largest

Lower High The lowest

chain by using the business process integration tools including the system requirements planning, enterprise modeling and integration. The objective of this paper is to develop a framework for implementing the traceability in the vegetable supply chain in order to facilitate both internal and chain traceability. First of all, we define the user requirements of the traceability system from each actor involved in the vegetable supply chain. Next, we develop an UML model for developing and implementing an internal traceability system on a vegetable supply chain. Then, we discuss how to implement the chain traceability based on the information exchange among the supply chain actors. Finally, we provide some conclusions and directions for future actions. 2. Analysis on the Chinese vegetable traceability information 2.1. Development of the vegetable supply chains in China Over the past three decades, the vegetable markets in China have grown from short, linear supply chains, strictly controlled by the state, to highly complex, increasingly diverse and progressively coordinated supply chains. Before the economic reforms of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the vegetable supply chains were centrally planned and managed, “total procurement, total sale” supply chains (Ruben, Boselie, & Lu, 2007; Zhang, Qingguo, & Xu, 2004). The vegetables were produced in villages from seeds and other nonlabor inputs provided by the state. The collectives inclined to produce a single variety of vegetables, delivering their assigned quotas to either state-controlled cooperatives or state-owned vegetable companies at fixed prices. The vegetable companies cleaned, sorted and packed the vegetables before sending them on to the distribution centers. The distribution centers allocated the vegetables to state-owned retail shops where they were sold at subsidized prices (Stringer, Sang, & Croppenstedt, 2009). During this transition period, the vegetable supply chains included millions of very small scale vegetable producers growing mostly different vegetable varieties on their individual parcels. Growers began selling their vegetables directly to traders, processors, wholesale markets, cooperatives, retail shops and supermarkets (Xiong et al., 2010). At present, in China, the vegetable supply chains are unique in the sense that they include many distinct commodities that are grown in various regions at different time periods of the year, and are transported through different modes (Yang et al., 2008). The vegetable commodities have different end uses such as food, feed, as well as beverages etc., which are relatively homogenous. This supply chain can be modeled as described in the UML communication diagram, as it is shown in Fig. 1. This figure shows a vegetable supply chain as a whole. In the communication diagram, components such as the field, middleman, wholesale market, supermarket, retailer and customer are different responsible actors, and they interact according to certain activities, possibly producing new lots. The activity ordering is specified by the numbers associated with the above mentioned procedures. Fig. 1 images five vegetable supply chains, which represent the most common vegetable supply chains in China. The first supply chain is the main vegetable supply chain with the strongest representation in China; at the beginning, the middlemen perform an acquisition from the field growers and create a new lot by a simple processing. Then, the middlemen provide (transport) the fresh vegetables to the wholesales. Next, the retailers perform an acquisition (buying) to purchase the vegetables from wholesales and sell the vegetables to the customers. The customer comes after the last responsible actor of this supply chain: he/she does not create any lot because his/her acquisition does not need to be traced. Except when they sell most of vegetables to retailers,

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Pre-production

Producing

343

The final product

Consumer

Supermarket

Wholesales

Cooperative

Consumer

Factory

Middleman

Retailers

Growers

Agricultural materials

Street vendors Community vegetable Market Small supermarket

Deep processing products

:lot {new} <<:supply>>

<> processing acquisition

acquisition Seed:

Selling

Cultivated field:

Retailer:

Wholesale:

* transport *

* providing *

Customer: * selling *

* *

* transport

sell

Factory transfer *

Middleman:

* :lot {new}

transport Factory

Supermarket: *

*

acquisition

Fig. 1. A complete vegetable supply chain.

factories may buy some of them. After their processing in the factories, a new batch will be produced, and it may be further processed into other products. In addition, there will be transactions among other wholesale markets due to the price differences between distinct regions. The second supply chain: as compared with the first chain, only the middleman will be removed. The third supply chain: supermarkets purchase vegetables directly from the growers in order to sell them to consumers. This model is suitable for the case when cultivation is made in the peripheral area, near supermarkets. This case is not very common in China. The fourth supply chain: factories buy vegetables directly from the field growers for deep processing. The fifth supply chain: cooperatives make the connection among the scattered growers more closely for dealing with the lack of harmony between dispersed planting and market measures. Cooperatives have emerged over the recent years in China, and this model is also not very often found here. 2.2. Tracking of the supply chains The Vegetable Supply Chain traceability is the ability to identify the responsible actors, the activities, and the location of an entity by means of the identifications throughout the supply chain. In other

words, traceability refers to tracking a product or the product features records in the whole process or supply chain system (Zhang, Zhang, Liu, Fu, & Mu, 2010). This is a security system based on the risk management and it has other auxiliary functions: it can document the flow information of the products from raw materials to finished products on all the aspects of the process, and recycles the hazardous products that have not been consumed; these actions can also cut off the hazardous product source, remove the hazards and reduce the losses. In addition, by tracking the entire supply chain it is improved the supply chain efficiency (ResendeFilho & Buhr, 2008). Obviously, it extends the traceability data and promotes the development of the traceability system. Fig. 2 presents a downstream pathway of the vegetable traceability system by means of an activity diagram. This diagram shows the business processes of the vegetable production, together with the whole business stated in the vegetable supply chain. This is an integral vegetable supply chain from planting to production that includes almost all the activities and responsible actors in the chain. As it is shown in the figure, the behavior consists of five sections. The figure shows an appropriate semantic context, generic enough to represent any kind of vegetable, a means to univocally identify the traceability lots, activities and their relations. Also, it should include additional data regarding the food quality. Among them, within the traceability process, activities such as planting, harvesting, selling have more traceability information to be recorded.

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IMPORTOR/ CONSUMER

CROP

HARVEST

SELL

Purchasing

Grown

Aquisition

Harvest:batch[land]

Aquisition:batch[acqired]

Pesticide Monitoring

Raw material receiving

SEED

[damaged]

Fertilization

Sowing

Pesticide Monitoring:batch[land]

[rot]

[select]

Land:batch[mark] Cold storage [damaged]

[select]

Growing Transported: [transformation]

Storage:batch [transformation]

Pesticide Transportation Providing Land:batch[acquisition]

Provide:batch[providing]

Cold storage:batch [transformation]

Distribution

Distribution:batch [transformation]

Fig. 2. The effective and efficient supply chain traversal.

In the planting section, all the activities and participants have to be marked, and until the finishing of planting link, the data synchronization acquisition is complete. Following planting it comes the harvesting section. This process requires recording of information concerning land, pesticides and diseases monitoring, as well as transportation. The third section is dedicated to sales. Within this section, first of all is, set the purchase by recording customers, demand information, which will be then entered into the selling stage. When vegetables are sold, the information about storage, transportation, and retail needs to be accurately documented. This recorded information shapes a complete traceability information chain. For example, when a pesticide monitoring activity is involved, residues could be some important parameters when deciding to drop out one lot of vegetables. 3. Methods and materials 3.1. Modeling on the relationship between the responsible actors and traceability system In order to set up an efficient vegetable traceability system, the first step is to define the user requirements for the vegetables

supply chain (Dannson et al., 2004). A system-level approach is used to develop models for implementing the traceability system. The user requirements of the traceability system are defined by the UML Use Case Diagram Technique (Eriksson & Penker, 2000, pp. 17e57). The Use Case Diagrams are closely connected to scenarios. A scenario is an example of what happens when someone interacts with the system (Bechini et al., 2008). One of the most important goals of defining the system requirements is to have synchronization among the requirements of all the actors involved. Use Case Diagrams demonstrate the relationship between the responsible actors and traceability system. The observation of the system by use case can help to understanding the most important part of the system and meet users’ requirements and expectations (Zhang, Feng, Xu, & Hu, 2011). By means of use cases, the function of the system modules becomes clearer. Fig. 3 shows the consumer as playing the key role in the Use Case Diagram: Baseline information: The farmer will record in the system the farming practices used for each specific vegetable. There will also be recorded data such as the seed variety used, planting date, chemical application, harvesting etc. For specialty crops will also be needed the recording of organic practices information. The transporter should be able to enter the transporting details used in the

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Initial information

345

Processed information

Information of cultivation

Upload data of cultivation

Information of transportation

Upload data of transport

Farmer

Transporter

Upload data of cultivation Sales information

Upload data of sales

Test data

Warning

Consumer

Vendors

Food inspectors

Fig. 3. The consumer playing the key role in the Use Case Diagram.

system. Depending on the transporting process, these may include temperature, transporting time, distance, etc. The vendor should enter the sales information, including weight, batch, variety, etc. The inspectors should be able to provide data showing whether the production complies with the food safety regulations or not, including information on pesticide residues, heavy metal content, moisture content, etc. Processed information: All data will be uploaded into the system and the demands received for them will be authenticated based on the data stored in the system. For example, upon request, the system should be able to provide data for supporting the organic farming or processing practices. The system users (consumers) should be able to find the information based on the data stored in the system. 3.2. The quality information tracing data model A traceability package contains the entities that allow the tracing and tracking of the product path (Van Dorp, 2003). However, along this path, the quality safety is the ultimate goal to be achieved by tracing and tracking. As known, a traceable entity is a base concept of lots and activities. One traceable entity is located into a site and managed by a responsible actor. Each lot may be

generated from one or more lots. The generation is ruled by an activity (Wang, Zhang, Mu, Fu, & Zhang, 2009). Fig. 4 displays the static diagram model. In this diagram are shown the mutual relations among all pieces of information entered in the TraceableEntity field. The classes are grouped into two distinct UML packages: Traceability and Quality. The traceable entity is an abstract class that models the basic characteristics of the two entity types involved in traceability: lots and activities. The field TraceableEntity.id implements the traceable entity identifier. Here can be found all the information related to vegetables, including the vegetable origin, responsible actor, lot, activity and quality of vegetables. Each of these pieces of information links to TraceableEntity.id. Then the identity single coding will be constituted. As shown in Fig. 4, the association “is managed by” enforces a traceable entity to be always associated with a responsible actor. This constraint guarantees the univocal identification of the traceable entity, as described above. Further, the traceable entity is also associated with the Site, which holds its own unique identifier: i.e., each lot is placed in one site. Thus, at each stage of the supply chain, the traceability system is able to retrieve the information about the site where the lot has been processed or stored (Kim, Weston, Hodgson, & Lee, 2003). Both the site and the responsible actor are characterized by a number of attributes that summarize

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Traceability Site 1

is located into

*

+id +address +batch +…

TraceableEntity 0 .. 1

*

+id +batch +…

1

is managed by

ResponsibleActor +id +name

sell\product\purchase … Activity

Lot

+id +duration +…

+generationData generate

QualityFeature

is evaluated by *

+description

NumericalValue +decayRatio +maxValue +minValue +defectRate +MicrobiologyValue

CategrocalValue *

1

Defines

NumericalQF -value

CategrocalQF -performance

is defined by 1

*

+colour +smell +feeling

Fig. 4. UML Class Diagram of the traceability data model.

all the information required for traceability (Sorensen et al., 2010). The association “is generated from” points out that each lot may be generated from one or more lots. The generation is ruled by an activity. The consumers’ main concern regards the vegetable quality and safety. A corresponding evaluation is made for appearance, decay rate, smell, value range and other aspects. Finally, the evaluation results are inserted in QualityFeature. The evaluation of traceability entity may have proper or improper results. QualityFeature represents a single criterion.

3.3. Framework for the critical information The objective of this analysis is to identify the critical traceability points (CTPs) of the vegetables in general, and to identify the different granularity levels of vegetables, in particular (Zhang, Zhang, Dediu, & Cristea, 2011). A CTP is a point where the systematic information loss occurs when the information about a product or process is not linked to a product and recorded systematically. The results from this analysis could be used to provide input when elaborating an electronic traceability system

for food and in the implementation of food traceability (Karlsen & Olsen, 2011). By analyzing the vegetable production process, combined with the above UML modeling in the vegetable supply chain, the main system is divided into five sub-systems: plant management, security test, batch code management, production management, and user management. A static diagram is used for constructing the vegetable traceability system critical information (Fig. 5). The module is appropriate for providing the queries for the end consumers. It describes the static structures and properties of the vegetable traceability system. A modular processing is used in a complex vegetable traceability system in order to make it understandable. The hierarchy within the vegetable traceability becomes stronger and the structure gets clearer. The plant management: is an important module of the traceability system, since the plant management has a direct impact on the vegetables quality and safety. This module consists of three parts: land information, farmer information, and seed information. Before sowing, one needs to make sure that the land is not polluted. Therefore, the data monitoring related to the soil is essential. Then, farmers need to purchase the best seeds and record the data of these seeds.

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<> plant management

<> vegetable system

1

*

1

t:land information

1

1

<> user management

1

1

1…*

* t:farmer information

347

* <> batch code management

<> security test

<> production management

t:farmer information

r:quarantining before aquatic products processing

t:test on vegetal products security

t:test on transportation

t:test on vegetal environmental security

r:records of vegetable products storage

r:no polution of vegetable transportation

r:records of vegetable transportation storage

r:records of vegetable products collections

r:records of vegetable processing

t:test on finished aquatic products i

r:hygiene status of staff

r:Pesticide Residues testing

t:Pest Treatment

r:cultural environment

r:vegetable products sample testing

r:quarantining and testing vegetable

Fig. 5. The UML static diagram for the critical vegetable information.

The security test: Farmers use fertilizers and pesticides inappropriately, and the environmental pollution has a negative impact on vegetables. This source of pollution affects directly the vegetables quality and safety and the consumers are more and more concerned about this critical issue. Consequently, monitoring of pesticide residues and harmful substances needs to be intensified in order to improve the quality and safety of vegetables. The batch code management: Before the transportation of vegetables to the wholesale markets, the actors have to record: vegetables weight, variety and origin for determining the batch of vegetables; the number of vegetable batch, together with the company’s logo and other information, will be used for generating the traceability code. The batch information represents the only identification of this vegetable batch. The production management: Production management is the basic module which is mainly related to cleaning, grading, disinfection, cold storage, packaging, and key operating information entry, in order to control the vegetable processing information so as to ensure the product quality and safety. By using this module, the processing and inspection personnel performs the participants’ main activities. These persons are in charge of the quality management and parameters of the main products and record each adequate piece of information. The user management: Various user groups have different administrative rights settings. Consumers are not allowed to access

the vegetable production and management interface. Only the internal staff is authorized to access the management interface. Different department staff operates on distinct management databases in order to avoid the access of other managers into the same interface at the same time, so that the system could be maintained in a stable condition. 4. Implementation of the traceability system 4.1. The product coding and technologies identification The traceability chain needs to be encoded in order to ensure the traceability and integrity for each participating objects. The traceability chain of each of the participating object tracing system is the key point; and then substandard product recovery system can be correctly implemented depending on the records of the participating objects (Zhang, Lv, Xu, & Mu, 2010). To ensure the integrity of the traceability chain, each participating object was given a single code: in the growing stage, both the growers and the land are encoded; the land code consists of basic codes and the land serial number. For example, if in a farm was allocated “03” as the basis of coding, the nineteenth land plot is indicated by 0319. At the same time, a single code corresponds only to a grower and the land that he seeds. The enterprise managers also have a working code; the packers’ code is composed of the first letter of the Phonetic

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alphabet and the relevant Figures to avoid the interference of the same names (Qi et al., 2011). The harvested vegetable is encoded in accordance with the batch number. A batch number is made up of the harvest date, harvest sequence number and land code number. Finally, each batch of vegetables has a unique identifier. The most frequently used tags are the barcodes and RFID tags. The RFID tags consist of a chip that can be attached onto or implanted into any surface of an item (Bechini et al., 2008). Regarding the use of RFID tags for traceability issues, RFID technology looks very promising. Unlike barcodes technology, for example, RFID allows the information acquisition at a rate of 1000 tags per second (Roussos, 2006). Thus, it is reasonable to expect a growing acceptance of RFID technologies in the next years as basic components within the traceability information systems. The simplest form of identification consists of a numeric or alphanumeric string. The string does not give any information about the unit, but it provides an univocal key for retrieving the traceability data stored elsewhere. To guarantee the string uniqueness, several standard systems have been introduced. The most promising standard system is certainly the GS1 system (GS1 Traceability, 2006). By managing the assignment of company prefixes and coordinating the accompanying standards, GS1 maintains the strongest lot identification system in the world. GS1 provides seven Identification Keys to support the identification of items, services, locations, logistic units, returnable containers, etc. As regards the traceability, most of the numbering structures of interest have been developed by GS1; among them, GTIN (Global Trade Item Number), which uniquely identifies each commercial unit, SSCC (Serial Shipping Container Code), that uniquely identifies a logistics unit (dispatch unit), GLN (Global Location Number), which identifies any legal, functional or physical location within a business or organizational entity. However, more complex forms of identification can be achieved by entering descriptions of the item main features. The vegetable traceability code was formed with the European Article Number (EAN) and Uniform Code Council (UCC) that is a global multi-industry supply chain for the effective management of an open international standard EAN.UCC system (Fig. 6). The EAN.UCC system in China is known as the ANCC system which was developed starting from the barcode identification system of global unity, also known as the global uniform and universal language of business. The EAN.UCC system is a standardized codification system for global unification, which is made up of three parts: the coding system, the automatic identification of data carriers and the

electronic data exchange standard protocol. The three parts support each other closely. The EAN.UCC codification system is the core of the system; there is an identification code and an additional property code in the circulation of all the products and services, including trade items, logistics units, assets, location and service relationship. The additional property code cannot exist independent of the identification code. The Global Trade Item Code (GTIN) is adequate for traceability. This is the ANCC coding system and is the most widely used identification code. GTIN has uniqueness and stability: the uniqueness of the project means that to the similar commodities should be allocated the same commodity identification code; the distinct goods should have assigned different commodity identification codes (Ren, Zhang, Mu, & Fu, 2009). Stability is a principle according to which the commodity identification code is assigned one time and as long as the goods do not change their basic characteristics, their code should remain unchanged. The retrospective coding structure uses the combination of the GTIN and the lot number. According to Application Identifier of Chinese EAN.UCC System, “GB/T 16986-2003” use (01) and (10) as identifiers. Fig. 7 shows a typical vegetables traceability coding. (01): GB/T 16986 7.2 of the trade item identifier AI (01), the Application Identifier “01” indicates that the data segment after “01” means the global trade item code (Global Trade Item Number, GTIN for short). Manufacturer identity code: A unique vendor ID is applied by the company to the GS1 China. Trade item code: Enterprises obtain the Manufacturer identity code, they can encode themselves the goods of the enterprise project and this encoding can be made up of four or five Arabic numbers. Check code: Its role is to provide the reduction of input errors. (10): GB/T 16986 7.2 of the batch identifier AI (10), the Application Identifier “10” indicates that the data segment after “10” means the batch code of the traded item. Elevation date: represents the date when these vegetables were produced. Land code: the place where these vegetables were planted. Order code: this code appears randomly. 4.2. The system development tools In order to facilitate its use and maintenance, the system is based on the B/S software architecture system (Li, Wang, Zhang, Fu, & Zhang, 2009). The server operating system, which is in charge of Coding retail

Global Trade Item Code (GTIN) Global Shipping Container Code (SSCC) Identification code

Global Service Relation Code (GLN) Global Returnable Asset Identification Code (GRAI)

Coding system

Global Service Relation Code (GSRN)

Additional Property code

AI + Additional Property Code Fig. 6. The EAN.UCC system.

The encoding of non-retail Logistics unit code

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(01)

XXXXXX

Manufacturer identification Trade Item Identifier

XXXXXX X

(10)

Check code

Item code

YYYYMMDD XXXX

XXX

Elevation date

Order

Lot

Land

Fig. 7. Structure of the vegetables traceability coding.

the web site management and information dissemination, uses Windows Server 2003 Enterprise. The Customers system could be any version following Windows 2000. SQL Server 2005 is used for the network database system; C# 2.0 is selected as a server-side programming language; ASP.NET 2.0 is used as a development tool. The system is developed within the environment of Microsoft Visual Studio. Visual Studio is a tool for formal ASP.NET and components development. On Microsoft’s development platform, Visual Studio.NET provides for the first time a simple, integrated development environment for all the Microsoft.NET languages. The system has the following features:  It is a simple, unified programming model for all. NET language and can be used for the development of Windows and Web applications;  The dragging operation may be used for server-side development in the “Server Explorer”;  It has a strong self-definition of IDE and extend model;  It provides the support for XML;  It has extremely easy cross-platform applications for the integration of Web services.

349

4.3. The system implementation Any application is made up of the following components: display logic (the presentation layer), transaction processing logic (the functional layer), and data access logic (the data layer), as it is shown in Fig. 8. (1) The presentation layer. This layer is the user interface part, which is the interaction between the user and system interfaces. Its main function is to input, check the user input data and output data display system, but the checking of contents is performed only for the data formats and range, it has nothing to do with the business processing logic. (2) The functional layer. The main feature is the application layer, which includes all the business processes. The functional logic of computing which includes statistics, summary, and analysis is on the functional layer. (3) The data layer: Data layer is the DBMS (database management system) which manages the data query, updates the data, and sets the permissions for user in order to read and write data. Therefore, the system is structured as follows:

4.4. The traceability management system description The plant management interface (Fig. 9): This interface has the following functions: sow management, fertilizer management, irrigation management, pest management and so on. Administrators can record a variety of plant-related information including: the seed type, weight, origin, etc. by means of the sow management interface. The fertilizer management records the type of fertilizer,

:UserTerminal

:WebServer WebInterface GUI

:DataLayer Transformation and Storage

GUI

Checking

InputProcesing

DataManager

DataBase

1…*

1…*

*

*

SOAP/HTTP

Fig. 8. The simplified communication structure for the vegetable traceability system by a UML deployment diagram.

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Fig. 9. The plant management interface.

frequency, weight, etc. and the irrigation-related information can be recorded through the irrigation management interface which includes the irrigation frequency, amount, date, etc. The detailed information on pest control can be recorded and saved with the aid of the pest management. The generation of the two-dimensional traceability code label (Fig. 10): the vegetable cultivation and processing information is saved on RFID cards; the indicators of the detected vegetable

samples are satisfactory. The card reader will read the information on the RFID cards; the staff enters the vegetable weight, then it will be automatically generated the two-dimensional code label as follows, by clicking “print label”: The consumer inquiries terminal (Fig. 11): Consumers can select two sorts of input methods for entering the traceability code: barcode scan and keyboard input. If it has been selected the barcode scan method, the scanner associated with the terminal is prepared

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351

Fig. 10. The generation of the two-dimensional traceability code label.

to read the matrix barcodes. The alternative method is that the user can input the traceability code from a virtual keyboard. After the traceability code has been entered and the ‘Query’ button clicked, a new window will pop up displaying the traceability information on vegetables. Being different from the previous traceability systems, a virtual tag will appear on the top of the window to provide the basic information both on the variety of vegetable and the vegetable enterprises. The traceability and processing information as well as the label attached on packages should be exactly the same with the virtual one. The detailed information is listed in the below window for vegetables: fertilizer records, pest control,

irrigation management, sowing management. After the inquiry, the user can click on the ‘Back’ button and exit the system. 4.5. Model validation and system evaluation As an example, a detailed tracking research has been made in a pollution-free vegetable production enterprise from Tianjin city. All the key aspects are recorded in a thorough manner, throughout the whole supply chain. There are 328 acres of vegetable plots in this farm. The land is divided into 187 pieces. Each piece of land was assigned a code and a farmer. Farmers also have a fixed

Fig. 11. The consumer inquiries terminal.

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Table 2 Effectiveness analysis before and after the model implementation. No.

Content

Content before the implementation

Content after the implementation

1.

Management precision Data acquisition

Day/Week

Minute/Second

Incomplete artificial collection Fuzzy Artificial reasoning with delay Empirical reasoning with delay None

Automatic and accurate mass capture Precise positioning Automatic real-time warning Accurate and real-time mass capture Reusable code

None

Modularity, replaceable codes and nodes User-friendly interface

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Traceability Exception management Quality analysis

7.

Development and deployment efficiency Maintainability

8.

User-friendliness

None

identification coding. There are 278 farmers. They signed a supply contract with the Beijing XinFadi wholesale market of vegetables to supply one ton of fresh vegetables daily. The main vegetables planted include eggplants, cucumbers and tomatoes. The farm workers represent the starting point of the supply chain. Their main responsibility is to plant and harvest vegetables. Also, they have to destroy pests, fertilize the soil, etc. After harvesting, the vegetables go through pesticide residue testing, grading and packaging. Then, each package will be assigned an identity label. Safe and pollutionfree vegetables are transported to the wholesale market; these vegetables will be numbered and marked with the identity label, so as the traceability to be achieved. After tracking the entire supply chain, three researchers from China Agricultural University and three specialists from the host enterprise were invited to participate in a committee in order to draw up an evaluation framework for traceability systems, based on the views of system building and maintenance, user experience and external influences. They also analyze and suggest some changes for the software. The system improvement suggestions include: the traceability information security on Web, accuracy of medication records in database, fine-tuning of the system menu and interface design. The effectiveness analysis before and after the model implementation are shown in Table 2. 5. Conclusions and discussions The implementation of a traceability system in the vegetable supply chain is a complex task. The foundation for any possible discussion about the development of this sort of systems is represented by the taking-up of a generic data model for traceability. Such a model has been suggested and expressed using UML, describing its basic classes and the patterns used to represent the lot behavior throughout the vegetable supply chain. 1) A series of UML diagrams were developed so as to represent a method for modeling the product, process, and quality as well as the transformation information by any link in the value chain. All the traceability data captured must be linked to a uniquely identified TU (Traceability Unit). 2) The system performs a real-time tracking of the process control functions by using the UML modeling based on the accomplishment of the vegetable processing information management functions, thus making easier the quality improvement of the processed products and reducing the product recall costs; furthermore, the system successfully handles the whole process of vegetable quality tracking and tracing and provides rather detailed traceability records to consumers.

3) The system uses a powerful ASP.NET, ADO.NET technology with the Windows2003 þ .NET Framework þ SQL Server 2005 service platform. As a development tool, Visual Studio applies to developing the B/S mode Web-based for processing the vegetables quality and safety traceability system; the Web-mode system is used to achieve a complete separation of codes and pages, thus being improved the system development and maintenance efficiency. Compared with the traditional system, it achieves a crosscommunication information flow between manager, worker and consumer. The system testing and experiment evaluation proved to be some effective vegetable quality management tools that lead to maximization of the vegetable workflow monitoring and recording. It effectively improves the probability of high quality and safety during the production process through enabling constant monitoring of the critical parameters in this process. In order to achieve the traceability goals along the vegetable supply chain, the businesses should focus both on internal and chain traceability. The determination of user requirements for the traceability system is the first step in implementing the system. Each supply chain actor should establish his traceability plan based on the driving factors such as the need for regulation, the business requirements and the customer preferences. The relational database management system could be used by each actor in the supply chain to implement the internal traceability system. All the vegetable information should be recorded in a centralized database system and only the relevant lot/batch information should be passed on to the next link in the supply chain. The additional information can be requested by the authorized users (such as regulatory agencies) in case of a suspect product. This additional information should be provided in due time. The application of this framework for developing and implementing the internal and supply chain traceability is the next step. It is the actual implementation in the various supply chain actors that would provide a better insight into the limitations of this framework and the way it could be changed for the traceability of distinct food products.

Acknowledgments This work was co-financed from the European Social Fund through the Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources Development 2007e2013, project number POSDRU/89/1.5/S/59184 “Performance and excellence in postdoctoral research in Romanian economics science domain”.

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