Commodity Online Services – Minimised risk, universally verifiable quality and integrated participants in the egg delivery chain for the European Egg Consortium

The customer

The European Egg Consortium GmbH (EEC) has committed itself to inspecting, monitoring and tracing foodstuffs, especially eggs and egg products. The Consortium focuses its attention on products made from eggs at every stage of the production and distribution processes. One of the ways in which the EEC supports the egg industry in the production and marketing of its products is by defining specific quality standards, monitoring these standards as well as licensing the different marks that identify the quality standards. The EEC has been commissioned by various monitoring organisations to ensure compliance with these standards, such as the "Verein für kontrollierte Tierhaltungsformen e. V. (KAT)" (Association for Controlled Animal Husbandry) for organic, barn-laid and free-range eggs and the "Gütegemeinschaft Eier GmbH" (GGE), a company that monitors egg quality, for other types of eggs.

The challenge

One of the resources that KAT uses when carrying out the job of checking and monitoring eggs is its own Internet database. This database captures on a weekly basis all movements of goods from the producer through to the food retailer. Other capturing systems bundle together product inspection parameters and results, together with information about the ingredients contained in the feed given to laying hens and information about the feed producers. The aim of the EEC was to couple its existing databases with a tracking database, so as to ensure quick and complete traceability of the goods marketed with the quality marks.

The T-Systems solution

To meet these requirements, EEC uses its existing databases together with the tracking database from T-Systems, or rather, with the system modules documentation and tracking system OS-FS (Online Service – Food Safety) and OS-CS (Online Service – Content Service). Also, all participants in the production and delivery chain – i.e. the users of the quality marks provided by the EEC – are represented in the system. These users authenticate themselves in the system and log on into the COS system via the internet in absolute security. Alternatively, they can also provide their information over the phone. Furthermore, socalled machine-to-machine communication solutions provide additional communication channels either via corresponding software interfaces to Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP systems) or via direct data connections.

Customer benefits

By means of OS-FS, not only is it possible to quickly trace and identify batches of eggs; additionally, the OS-FS system provides efficient recall management in the event of a crisis. The EEC holds comprehensive information about the origin and quality of each egg batch. In the event of contamination, any damage to image and commerciability can be limited immediately, meaning that risk is absolutely quantifiable. For all participants in the egg delivery chain, entry to the COS system platform is extremely simple. In a further step, the EEC can also provide information for end-users when they are making their purchase. Thanks to the operation of the IT infrastructure of the COS system family in T-Systems’ high-security computer centre as well as use of the IP backbone provided by Deutsche Telekom AG, the EEC uses the latest, highly secure IT and network technology.