25.04.2022

Developing a new case study for VIEWAPP: Food inspections

VIEWAPP continues to build up the volume of digital inspection cases using the VIEWAPP smartphone app with built-in fraud protection.

After strong success in industries such as:

- The banking industry (collateral inspections for monitoring and valuation);

- Insurance industry (inspections of insureds for insurance acceptance and loss settlement);

- Leasing industry (inspections of leases for monitoring and tracking conditions)

- E-commerce (inspections of content units for websites) and others,

We have unexpectedly and with surprise discovered the huge potential of remote secure VIEWAPP inspections for a whole specific layer: FOOD inspections. Food inspections are in dire need of digital services and are ready to adopt VIEWAPP's innovative technology, especially since it is quickly focusing on scenarios specific to this industry. 

As an example, let's take the inspection of a 15-ton shipment of cashew nuts that is on its way from India to Dubai.

First of all, let's start with The Association of Food Industries (AFI), an organization that provides methodological summaries for traders and services for the U.S. food import trade. Many expert firms work with it, working for those customers who care about compliance with regulations, standards, food requirements, and quality of supply.

AFI pursues a variety of interests, including:

- importers of nuts and agricultural products and their overseas suppliers;

- Importers of processed foods and their suppliers abroad;

- importers and sellers of olive oil, etc.

The expert firm not only inspects the foodstuffs on the basis of issued requirements and AFI recommendations, but also provides the customer with a specific report. In the process of cooperation with the expert company the following peculiarities were identified:

- Lack of a convenient tool to conduct the inspection and generate a report form;

- Lack of automatic recognition of food damage according to the methodology;

The expert company hires employees in different countries to conduct inspections, many of them are not properly informed about how to do everything properly and they have to be instructed, which takes time and loses quality. Having the right tool will solve this problem by following a script.

How does VIEWAPP help everyone involved?

- We develop an automatic fault detection tool for food, which in this case is cashew nuts, of which there are six different varieties.

- The automatic generation of report documentation to provide the customer in a convenient digital format (not in the form of scans or in some other "pre-digital" versions) is being developed.

"Trial ballooning" in food inspections, using the example of a cashew nut batch inspection by an Indian supplier, has revealed a huge potential market for digital inspections in most of the world and may well become a widely used standard. After all, customers who receive neat and conveniently informative reports will want the same levels of service from other expert firms.

The product case is also interesting in that it will be possible to visually track the entire geography of inspections on a digital map, and even rank manufacturers! We are still working out a lot of different possibilities for this case and we are convinced that the prospects for VIEWAPP technology in the food industry are very promising.