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By Michael Eggebrecht
Signaling a significant expansion of its cloud computing services, Hewlett-Packard has launched a cloud platform for the manufacturing sector. The platform's first offering, introduced in conjunction with GS1 Canada, will be a recall service for the food industry, available this fall.
While HP provides cloud services for IT management and application cycle management, "this will be the first time that we're coming to market with a platform approach to a specific vertical industry," Rebecca Lawson, HP's director of worldwide cloud initiatives, told CIOZone.
In teaming with the Canadian arm of GS1, a supply chain standards organization with almost 150 member groups across the globe, HP has developed a service that will let Canadian food companies share data and speed up the recall process, saving money and improving safety. Lawson called it "a great example of using technology to solve problems that otherwise can't be solved by traditional business process architectures and technology."
During recalls, companies were not communicating effectively, explained Eileen MacDonald, COO of GS1 Canada. Leveraging HP's cloud infrastructure, the new service will allow companies to quickly exchange handling, disposal and reimbursement instructions. In a recall, notifications will be sent out to authorized users and targeted retailers, and the service will provide traceability security and an audit trail.
Noting that Canada is considered a worldwide leader in food safety and traceability, Mick Keyes, senior architect in HP's office of the CTO for business-critical systems, said that the platform essentially gets entities in the supply chain to publish and access information from the HP cloud, creating visibility into the supply chain itself.
Available on a subscription basis, the service will initially be limited to the Canadian food industry. But GS1 and HP have larger plans. HP is in talks with GS1 U.S., according to MacDonald, who said that toys, baby furniture and accessories will be the next area the service will cover in Canada. And on Sept. 9, GS1 Canada will host a working session for the pharmaceutical industry.
Added HP's Lawson, "We expect that this platform will be utilized to extend into adjacencies … within manufacturing that span out from product recall." Keyes pointed to anti-counterfeiting efforts, the aeronautical industry and hazardous materials as possible areas for the cloud platform.
GS1 Canada, which has more than 10,000 business members across 23 sectors, recognized the need for standardization in the recall process, according to MacDonald. After consulting with companies of varying sizes, it put out an RFP earlier this year. HP, one of several vendors that competed for the contract, won for "a multitude of reasons," said MacDonald.
"We've been looking at this general area, not just the food recall area, for about 15 months," said Keyes, adding that HP has a core team focusing on the food industry. But a number of different groups at the Palo Alto, Calf.-based company have been involved in the initiative, including its HP Labs research division.
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