TraceGains, a provider of compliance, quality, and innovation solutions for the food and beverage (F&B) industry, has announced the launch of its Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solution for material compliance and lot-level ingredient quality control. Purpose-built to streamline Certificate of Analysis (COA) processing to ensure a product's compliance in terms of quality, performance, and safety, TraceGains' IDP strives to eliminate the need for manual processes while improving accuracy and operational efficiency across workflows.

"We designed IDP to deliver superior accuracy and reliability by continuously learning and improving with every use," says Paul Bradley, senior director of product marketing, TraceGains. "Our AI-driven solution eliminates the inefficiencies of manual data verification, empowering brands to proactively manage supply chain quality and compliance. Customer feedback indicates it is a smarter, faster way to ensure the safety and integrity of the products consumers rely on."

IDP is built on OpenAI's foundation model, and trained and validated against global F&B industry COAs, even as COA formats evolve. Large-scale brands processing thousands of COAs monthly spend countless days and hours relying on manual inefficient and error-prone methods. TraceGains IDP automatically reviews inbound COAs against required specifications, flagging potential issues where additional human oversight is needed. In time-in-motion studies, IDP eliminated the average 12-minute per-page manual setup previously required, reducing implementation times.

Vertical AI model optimized for food and beverage

In today's F&B supply chains, millions of non-standardized documents circulate annually between suppliers, manufacturers, and retailers, containing mission-critical information on ingredient specifications, food safety, allergen declarations, and sustainability data. TraceGains IDP leverages advancements in AI and natural language processing to extract relevant information from these non-standard documents, transforming them into structured, composable data that integrates with TraceGains solutions.

While recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) have improved fields like legal and financial services, the availability of AI solutions optimized for F&B have yet to be realized. The release of TraceGains IDP represents a vertically tailored AI-powered solution optimized for the industry, built on OpenAI trained with decades of contextual F&B data from TraceGains. IDP provides a foundation for the future of food quality capable of addressing specialized tasks effectively, beginning with COA as the first offering.

Unlike solutions based on static, zoning-based Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technologies, IDP leverages advancements in AI to read unfamiliar and non-standard document formats. The system also learns over time, enhancing data extraction and accuracy as more documents are processed.

"With the release of IDP, TraceGains is reinforcing its legacy and leadership as an F&B innovator by applying our domain expertise to advancements in AI and passing that advantage and power to customers," says Greg Heartman, VP, product management, TraceGains. "By combining our rich contextual TraceGains data with the OpenAI model, we've created a vertical-specific AI solution for brands to manage the continual quality of their supply chain and ensure consumer food safety."

"Digitizing COAs and making them actionable through TraceGains has resulted in a 75% reduction of out-of-spec lots on the receiving dock," notes Bill Besson, quality assurance director, Chelsea Milling, makers of Jiffy Mix.

In addition, TraceGains IDP can integrate with existing TraceGains solutions, simplifying onboarding for food and beverage brands looking to modernize supply chain compliance.

Related: Automating the supply chain to backfill ingredient shortages