Reference method for analyzing material flow, information flow and information loss in food supply chains

This paper describes a well-proven process mapping method designed for structured investigation of material flow and information flow in a food producing company or a whole supply chain. The material flow is viewed as an alternating sequence of durations and transformations, and a pre-determined set of questions is associated with each phase. These questions constitute a structured investigation which in turn translates into an overview of the relevant flows and serves to identify systematic information loss. The concept the method is based on, instruction on how to use it, and guidance on how to interpret the results is described in detail in this paper. Finally, some overall results from previous application of the method are presented. The conclusion so far is that the companies investigated are very good at data recording, they range from fairly bad to quite good on data sending, but there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to data receiving.