Barcodes, Standards Are Key To Efficiency

DM (master data management), touted as the new best route, had a head start at SYSCO. More than 10 years ago our management committed to investing in and implementing a shared uniform system and had the foresight to start that implementation with a centralized shared product and supplier data master. With industry-wide commitment to global standards compliance we can leap to MDM to close the circle of data consistency from field to plate—so fundamental, yet so critical to driving costs and inefficiencies out of the foodservice supply chain.

Is an industry-wide standard possible?

Tann: Not only is an industry-wide standard possible, it is feasible. When RFID becomes cost-effective, we can share volumes of information. Alone, this fact makes global standards adoption imperative. How much inconsistent and unimportant information do we all want to store, sift and search? We don’t need more information, we need accurate information that each trading partner can use. Foodservice industry standards can become a reality right now. We have the tools. Consider this: What if each of us focused on GTIN and GLN barcode and data compliance for the next six months? Couldn’t we be there?