END OF PROJECT REPORT

SaFES - IST - 1999 - 20842

Safe Food Enhancement System

SaFES trials a web-enabled software tool using well-established HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) principles to improve the quality of processes within food manufacturing plants. The SaFES tool is used by a team led by the manufacturer’s HACCP implementer to help conduct a hazard analysis and determine the critical control points (CCPs) with their associated limits and define corrective actions. SaFES then gathers real-time data via easily installed dataloggers linked to a secure management system to automatically monitor the CCPs. Corrective actions can be established with customers. Reports of non-compliance and associated corrective action are documented and can be examined via authorised web-users within the supply chain. SaFES thus reduces effort expenditure in developing, running and auditing a HACCP-based quality system.

The results of the trial are far reaching and are examined from the perspective of each user role participating in the trial, viz: food processor, reseller, consultant and auditor. There are implications on policies and standards with the suggestion that regulatory bodies and audit authorities could well update the way they work with e-Work and ICT as the catalyst. Concepts such as SaFES have potential for society and its peoples from raising competitiveness, fuelling future growth in European industry, ‘setting the standard for Europe’, affecting the types of employment in Europe, improving the quality of life for people by allowing them to work smarter and cut down travelling. There is scope via the use of e-working for protecting and preserving the natural environment.

The benefits of participating in the trial extend beyond yielding a commercial SaFES tool. The partners have gained substantially by their involvement in the trial and have all gained considerable knowledge relevant to, and useful in, their businesses. The trial has the potential to act as the initiator of a chain reaction spreading e-working to a variety of supply chain management and economic development applications.