Traceability comprises standardized system of procedures covering all links of the fish product chain, both regarding the supply of products and the associated information to facilitate transparency for monitoring purposes. The proposed Fishbizz workshop addresses the eBusiness interoperability issues and possible solutions, eBusiness frameworks for SMEs and eBusiness applications in specific sectors.
The project overall objective is to increase the ability for SMEs in rural areas throughout Europe to implement traceability requirements in a cost effective manner in producing, selling and delivering high quality fish to domestic and international markets, and also help companies comply with international and EU regulations on food safety.
The workshop will consider some different approaches currently providing partial aspects of solutions in different electronic marketplaces. The standards operational today all around the world (for example UN/CEFACT, ISO, GS1 but aslo OASIS based work) will be the basis for develpment of a CWA on standards for traceability and sale of fish products.
There is a wide range of technology from Open source to advanced IT systems that can support the standards. However, especially for SME's, the price of such technology may be a significant issue. The objective is to produce a CWA which will enable enterprises (large and small) to select the most suitable and cost effective solutions for their business case. As an illustration of this, we consider here some different approaches currently providing partial aspects of solutions in different electronic marketplaces. These include, for example, UN/CEFACT, ISO, GS1 and also OASIS based work (including ebXML, drawn up collaboratively between OASIS and UN/CEFACT). These standards are today operational all around the world, and especially in the Far East where many advanced service providers offer business solutions to the marketplace. However, the standards communities themselves do not yet collaborate well concerning the detail of how these various standards should fit together, a pre-requisite for effective electronic business between different entities.As a specific illustration of this, ISO TC234/WG1 "Fisheries and aquaculture‖, has considered eBusiness requirements in the fisheries areas, but has not been taking into account the UN/CEFACT and OASIS standards. Instead, they use limited standards like Electronic Product Code Information Service (EPCIS) to integrate traceability into business environments. UN/CEFACT, OASIS, GS1 and ISO should be committed to solving this in the long term for the benefit of the suppliers and customers involved in the fish products supply chain.
We see that standards like EPCIS have a narrow point-to-point profile that works for a real time interaction profile with immediate partner systems. However, for end-to-end processes across the supply chain, you need also the distributed capabilities that the CEFACT and OASIS have provided in the form of ebXML. This is especially true for solutions that need to scale from local use and be proven to work in practical solutions throughout Europe and around the world.
Our idea here is to map the inter-relationships between these standards, and provide interoperable solutions that take full account of the differences between them, rather than picking one isolated standard that is strong in some areas but very weak in others.
