Ben Eldar Of Chainlane: How We Are Helping To Create A Resilient Food Supply Chain

An Interview With Martita Mestey

Automation: once the process for full visibility is in place, a lot of the routine is automated. This automation allows companies to better manage other items in their operations to both make sure the food supply chain is running healthy, but improve labor, expand to other needs they weren’t able to, and still make sure everything already in process is automatically running.

The cascading logistical problems caused by the pandemic and the war in Eastern Europe have made securing a reliable supply chain a national imperative. What must agriculture companies and policymakers do to ensure secure and resilient food supply chains? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders who can share insights from their experiences about how we can address these challenges. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ben Eldar.

Ben Eldar is the Chief Business Office (CBO) of Chainlane, a supply chain transparency platform helping companies in food & beverage and other verticals improve their operations from end to end thanks to full visibility, tracking, and data intelligence.

His vast supply chain experience includes working with companies such as KFC, Nike, Tesco, JCB, M&S, and more, as well as global partners such as SATO, Denso, Wiliot, and others.

Within the food & beverage industry, he’s been helping companies improve their operations as a whole by reducing waste and shrinkage, enhancing inventory visibility and business sustainability, as well as tracking all items all the way from supply to distribution centers or warehouses to the end restaurants or food locations.

His in-depth expertise on the matter provides another angle of how to improve supply chain resiliency by focusing on the process from end-to-end and not just in one location of the supply chain, thus seeing a much bigger picture and taking more details into account.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?

Tel Aviv, Israel

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

There isn’t one single interesting story, as I was fortunate enough to work in a variety of companies and contribute to many procedures and growth. I took part in setting up processes, management of teams, and even took part in acquisitions of other companies, so my career has had plenty of interesting moments :)

Should you be interested in one stand out experience…

During my employment at Glasshouse, I went on a trip to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, and when reaching the top, I displayed Glasshouse’ flag ☺

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

• Staying calm: things usually don’t work as expected, and staying calm when they don’t makes a huge difference in how to solve arising problems and handle the heat. In business, this happens often, and the calmness during hectic times is a biggie.
• Transparency: what you see is what you get, and I let me colleagues and teams know where we stand, explaining good and bad situations, and with it able to solve complex problems without beating around the bush. The team appreciates the transparency, and we end up solving issues together.
• Leading by example: this is an area where I believe colleagues and teammates that can see how you act and being a personal example displaying calmness, transparency, interest, common courtesy, and respect will inspire others to work more harmoniously with one another and understand your real meaning and action.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Some directions are covered below with the supply chain processes. Should you need additional info, let me know.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. To ensure that we are all on the same page let’s begin with some simple definitions. What does the term “supply chain” encompass?

All activities, resources, and processes involved in getting a product or service from its creation to delivery to the customer. The objective is to streamline the flow of goods and services while reducing costs and maximizing efficiency.

Can you help articulate the weaknesses in our current food supply chain systems?

The lack of visibility into our supply chains is what weakens it and holds it back from a healthier and more efficient status. In other words, not being able to see every ingredient, product, raw material at all times deprives us from knowing the status of the food, the health of our operations, and keeps us blind to make the appropriate changes and improvement.

Can you help define what a nationally secure and resilient food supply chain would look like?

For a nationally secure and resilient food supply chain, you need to be able to track all materials at any given time for location, status, and expectation. Especially when referring to ingredients and raw materials for food, visibility and status is of the essence, allowing us to best manage shipments, arrivals, and orders accordingly including being aware of whether they’re in good shape (or not). If an item is late, it could go bad or make other ingredients unusable if their expiration has arrived (or soon to), hence we need to see the big picture at any given time, track all items, to be aware what is where, when is it arriving, and be able to make changes/orders/requests accordingly if things aren’t fitting schedules, timetables, or health standards.

In addition, at this day and age, whether due to potential harm, diseases, and other hazards, an efficient recall process must be in place for food and/or ingredients. Besides the apparent need in case something isn’t in the appropriate condition, such items can also contaminate other assets as well as quickly spread to other regions and create greater havoc then if you can quickly recall an item.

Can you share with our readers a few of the things that your organization is doing to help create a more secure food supply chain?

Overall, we’re providing food & beverages companies full visibility from suppliers to distribution centers to their food locations, whether restaurants, grocery stores, or food kiosks or the sort. With this, they can track every single item from the time they leave the supplier to their route to the DC, and all the way to every single food location. Of course, this by itself provides them a big picture of where everything is at any given time, so they can better manage their operations and stock, as well as be aware of other important aspects of their materials, such as temperature of items to know ahead of time the status and whether they’re in line as planned, need to make any changes, or be aware of potential hazards before they occur.

With such tracking also comes the mitigation plan in case something is bad or possibly needs to be recalled, that you can track any single item individually or as part of a larger shipment and recall it back to avoid bigger potential problems by knowing where every single asset is at.

What are a few threats over the horizon that might disrupt our food supply chain that we should take action now to correct? Can you please explain?

The inefficiencies in today’s supply chain operations are a definite threat to our food supply chain. The lack of visibility keeps us operating blindly, in hopes things arrive in time, as expected, and without any potential issues. Unfortunately, when referring to food ingredients and materials, we can’t just ‘hope’ things are as needed but need to make sure that: health standards are strict, expiration dates aren’t past due, potential diseases or contamination are kept at bay, and that overall we’re aware of every part of the process to avoid putting people, food, and warehouses at risk.

Ok, thank you. Here is the main question of our interview. What are the “5 Things We Must Do To Create Nationally Secure And Resilient Food Supply Chains” and why?

1 . Tracking: we must track every single food ingredient from supply to delivery to usage. We’ve been helping companies follow material from growth/development/creation in a factory (supply) to its packaging, shipment, and arrival, as well as the continuous status through handling in the restaurants or grocery stores to maintain health requirements and standards.

2 . Recall: as mentioned, companies need to be able and follow every single piece of ingredient or food material, to quickly launch a recall process if the worst-case-scenario happens. Thanks to a variety of tagging options and tracking capabilities, our clients can not only follow their items but be aware of temperature during transit, thus can potentially recall items even if a major recall wasn’t needed but something went bad in-transit.

3 . Automation: once the process for full visibility is in place, a lot of the routine is automated. This automation allows companies to better manage other items in their operations to both make sure the food supply chain is running healthy, but improve labor, expand to other needs they weren’t able to, and still make sure everything already in process is automatically running.

4 . Data-driven innovation: With an automated and healthy supply chain, you can better adapt to trends as well as innovate, as the company freed up time and resources, and can make better data-driven decisions for its future also taking into account what is working, what isn’t, and which way the market is heading.

5 . Sustainability: with improved operations, full visibility, and greater control of your food supply chain, you’re truly enhancing sustainability. By tracking all items and their status, you can decrease shrinkage immensely by seeing all items and whether they are lost (or stolen) at any time, which helps avoid missing ingredients or the preparation of meals which may not be according to health standards. In addition, by being aware of status such as expiration dates, you can both know which items should be used before others and avoid preparing food that is quickly perishable. This on its own reduces food waste immensely, which contributes to a much more sustainable company, material use, and greener world :)

Are there other ideas or considerations that should encourage us to reimagine our food supply chain?

Seeing is believing. We can’t manage what we can’t see, and once we see our supply chain, then we can actually make decisions that are to our benefit instead of putting out fires.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can find more information on the supply chain, Chainlane, as well as different blog posts on our site chainlane.io.

This was very inspiring and informative. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this interview!