'Tracking' and 'tracing' are terms originating from logistics. 'Tracking' is about the location of products, and 'tracing' is about where the products come from and about what the individual ingredients are of an assembled product. Current food safety requirements have made the tracing of goods more and more important in case of product recalls along the chain, and also in case of liability aspects.
‘Quality-oriented tracking and tracing’ is a term used by our research team. For companies and chains, it has potentially more value than T&T alone. Quality-oriented T&T does not only establish the identity and location of products but also their quality in relation to parameters such as temperature, length of time and/or relative humidity. Products which can be followed in this manner within the chain can have their quality further in the chain being predicted at any given moment. Especially for perishable products, a pro-active quality-oriented T&T system offers more advantages than a conventional reactive T&T system: the quality progress of these products can be followed in the chain via a pro-active system, thus ensuring safety and forecasting quality.
What is KwaliTenT about?
KwaliTenT can help to answer the following questions:
- What are the goals that can be fulfilled by quality-oriented T&T ?
- Which quality-oriented T&T systems are available now and in the near future?
- Do commercially available systems fulfil the requirements of a sector?
Research can be carried out in four phases:
- A survey of commercially available T&T systems (eg. barcodes, time-temperature-indicators, freshness indicators, RFID-tags, mini-dataloggers, DNA coding, etc.) and a survey of the needs of a company or chain.
- Development of usage-scenario’s for these systems by model simulations and feasability tests. Choice of most suitable quality-oriented T&T systems for a company or chain.
- Carry out pilot-tests in the chain with interested companies to show the added value of the system.
- To communicate the developed knowledge to all chain partners, including a vision of the future.
Application
Quality-oriented T&T is applicable on all products which are subject to
quality perishability. Take, for example, meat, fish, dairy products, potatoes,
vegetables and fruit, flowers and the like. Besides for food products, the
concept is also applicable for (temperature-, moisture- and vibration-)
vulnerable products and high value products which can be subjected to theft.
We will also develop a method to determine which product-market combinations have the highest value added by using quality-oriented T&T.
