SITPRO has just published startling research into the cost of paper documents in the perishable foods supply chain. The ‘Project Hermes’ report finds that current documentary systems cost the perishables supply chain more than £1 billion annually. In contrast the research, which considers the use of paper in the whole international supply chain from suppliers in third countries to UK retailers, estimates that potential savings of over £700 million could be made by implementing straight-through processing (STP).
STP refers to the transfer of data by electronic message through all the parties in the supply chain, including importers, exporters and authorities. Open international standards for data and messaging (such as UN/CEFACT’s UNeDocs project and the UK implementation, UNeDocsUK) are a vital step towards providing this interoperability.
Since the completion of this research last year SITPRO has discussed the findings with government departments and the grocery industry to confirm the robustness of the results. With up to 1.4 million incidents of missing or delayed documents in a single year, incurring the additional cost of securing replacements or amendments, the benefits of reducing paper documents are clear.
Copies of the research are available from SITPRO or may be downloaded from www.sitpro.org.uk/reports/hermes.pdf (pdf 1.71MB 
).
Return to SITPRO News: Issue 65, Summer 2008
