e-Cert - the innovative multifunctional software for use in inspection and certification management. The software introduces a new standard of reliable inspection and certifica-tion procedures for safer food worldwide.
See the following topics in “e-Cert News” April/2005
1. BioFach, 24.-27.02.2005 in Nuremberg, Germany
2. News from e-Cert users
3. Merging of guidelines is one of the most interesting tool
for CBs
4. e-Cert at All Things Organic in Chicago, Tuesday 3rd May,
noon to 2pm, room N227a
Dear friends and colleagues,
BioFach was again the highlight for the Organic Industry in the starting
year. With its growth of about 10% in booths and visitors BioFach reflected
well the optimism of the market. e-Cert and intact were successful as
well. The interests grew compared to last year and many interested came
to visit the booths as well as the real-time presentation showing the
workflow of e-Cert including the offline-tool.
Now we are back to work life with its routines although for some certifiers this routines has changed quite a lot as they have already left the world of paper behind them – at least to a big extent.
I wish you success,
Gerald A. Herrmann
g.herrmann@ e-cert.net
Mobile: +49 (0)177 552 14 60
Please also look at our homepage www.e-cert.net
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1. BioFach, 24.-27.02.2005 in Nuremberg, Germany
Once again the number of visitors (+12%) and exhibitors (+8%) increased
at Biofach in Nurem-berg, Germany (more details at www.biofach.de ). e-Cert
booth was frequently visited – many certifying bodies took the opportunity
to learn more about the system and its advantages. The presentation of
e-Cert which was hold in a bi-lingual show was moderated by Gerald A.
Herrmann. The whole workflow from administration, inspection and certification
was shown as a team work including the offline tool with staff working
in different (cyberspace) countries. This show made the functionality
of e-Cert visible and generated increasing interest by certifi-ers.
The booth of Intact (the IT company programming e-Cert and one of the
shareholders of e-Cert IT GmbH) directly neighboured was as well frequently
visited. Traceability through the whole supply chain and the reliable
organization and structure of data from multiple supplier sources were
often part of the interest of visitors.
After all it was rewarding to see the success of the hard work which was
done in the last two years!
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2. News from e-Cert users
bio.inspecta in Switzerland was the first CB who switched from paper to
the electronic e-Cert system. All data were successfully transferred to
e-Cert. The complete inspection schedule for the new inspection season
2005 and nearly 10.000 operators was already completed in Febru-ary. Now
trainings of inspectors and office employees are taking place. First offline-inspections
will take place starting end of April.
At the offices of Austria Bio Garantie in Austria e-Cert was installed
right after Biofach for training. Transferral of data is completed. The
inspection schedule automatically and/ or manually organized within e-Cert
will take place in these days. Klaus Guger, project leader within ABG:
“The test environment is already running at the offices. As soon
as all employees and inspectors are well educated we will give it a “go”,
that I expect for end of April.”
Naturland in Germany is preparing the transferral of data in this week.
Training courses for employees and external inspectors are planned for
next month. Because of the mandating of inspection to independent inspection
bodies more project management is necessary. The Insti-tute for Marketecology
(IMO) as the most important inspection body working for Naturland as well
as other inspection bodies will start working on the web-tool to transmit
inspection re-sults. In the next step the inspection bodies can decide
whether they will use e-Cert also for their own needs (all clients, invoicing,
correspondence, guidelines etc.).
FVO/ICS in the US as the youngest user of e-Cert is currently preparing
the implementation procedures which will take place in summer this year.
Key user of different departments will establish the project team under
the management of Dirk Otto. A first training session for staff took already
place with a remote desktop session at 21st of April, after which all
specific pro-cedures for implementation will be prepared and integrated
into the blueprint for the imple-mentation of e-Cert at ICS/ FVO.
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3. Merging of guidelines is one very interesting tool for CBs
The guideline designer as a central tool of e-Cert offers the option to
handle several checklists and allows for the creation of a new merged
checklist for simple use by the inspector. With this feature it is possible
to order questions in a logical way so that questions about e.g. “docu-mentation
of off-farm-inputs” from different standards will be sorted to the
same logic at one place in the inspectors’ checklist.
The following screenshot shows how it works: Part No. 10 of in this case
the Eurepgap checklist which can be seen on the left in grey is moved
by “drag and drop” to the right side and is inte-grated into
the checklist for integration with other guidelines.
All relevant standard requirements which are not merged will be listed
at the end of the merged checklist. This will prevent that any topics
of the standard will be forgotten! Creating such single checklists is
quite easy if your current checklists are well structured. Of course,
already existing checklists can be imported. Some checklists e.g. Eurepgap
can be downloaded from the internet.
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4. e-Cert at All Things Organic in Chicago, Tuesday 3rd May,
noon to 2pm, room N227a
e-Cert will be presented at All Things Organic in Chicago by Gerald A.
Herrmann and Robert Simmons (ICS/FVO) at the last day of the fair. Use
this opportunity to learn more about e-Cert and its vast functionalities.
Registration is not required.
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“e-Cert News” is published by Organic Services. Gerald A. Herrmann, Director of Organic Ser-vices is responsible for international business development of e-Cert. We welcome comments.
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