FXA Group was established six years ago by a group of Thai programmers from Microsoft and IBM, with the aim of developing software for traceability purposes, for the food industry in particular.

Chatta Udomwongsa, marketing head of FXA, said the company has spent about two years in research and development of a core software engine for traceability systems and has come up with ready-made templates that can easily be adapted to customers' requirements.

Called "OpsSmart", it represents an intelligent component in food traceability systems for food businesses. For the last three years the company has sold its food traceability systems to various customers in Thailand, such as Betagro, CP, Pack Food and Thai Union Frozen. The company has also exported its food traceability systems abroad, to markets including the United States, England, the Netherlands, the Philippines, China and Australia.

OpsSmart has been localised into six main languages. FXA Group has established overseas representative offices in India and England with two in the United States.

Food-traceability requirements in any country are generally the same. The differences are in the size and complexity of the application, and vary from a few days for implementation to large and complex systems needing months or even years to implement.

"Our software can be customised to fit the specific requirements of each customer. Some customers require traceability of horizontal information but some demand in-depth tracing," said Chatta.

The company sees its role as providing service rather than selling software products because, Chatta said, each customer has specific needs that require individual customisation. "What food they want to trace, what trace criteria to use, the trace procedure, and the data and information they want to collect, for example," he said.

OpsSmart is suitable for tracing several kinds of foods including pork, chicken, shrimp and vegetables. Apart from OpsSmart as the technology platform, the company has also developed a series of traceability applications including TraceItSmart, FarmSmart, QualitySmart, ProductionSmart and FreightSmart.

TraceItSmart, formerly known as TraceSafe, is the strongest application, allowing stakeholders to navigate the entire food supply chain from a single view, while FarmSmart, formerly FarmTrace, is designed to meet the data collection and distribution needs of the supply chain at the producer level.

QualitySmart, formerly QualityTrace, is designed to meet the inspection needs of food processors before the production process begins, while ProductionSmart, formerly ProductionTrace, automates data collection throughout the production process, from raw material inputs to finished products.

FreightSmart, formerly called ShipTrace, enables trading and logistics companies to provide food safety information electronically to their partners such as exporters, retailers and manufacturers.

The company has grown by 20 to 30 per cent annually with around 80 per cent of revenue generated from the domestic market and the rest from abroad.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation