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| Case Study |
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Providing Farm Express a Radical Solution in Livestock Tracking |
Patni equips Farm Express with a high-tech Cattle Traceability System, to help it meet new European and US government regulations and expand its leadership to the South American market.
The Client
Farm Express is a leading supplier of livestock information services and products to the agriculture industry of UK
The Challenge
The outbreak of highly contagious diseases such as mad cow, and foot and mouth resulted in significant losses for the US and Europe livestock industry. To develop control mechanisms for such epidemics, the Government agencies and super markets have mandated a code of practice for all suppliers. This requires animal identification for providing total traceability and accountability throughout the food chain.
Farm Express decided to implement a reliable system to track its meat shipments. It had an 8-month window to implement the system, but lacked the requisite domain expertise in embedded systems to take independent responsibility. When approached by Farm Express, Patni was faced with the challenging task of developing and implementing cattle Traceability System, initially estimated to require 12-14 months to execute.
The Solution
Patni leveraged its expertise in product life cycle support services in embedded technologies and its onsite-offshore capability, to develop and implement an integrated Cattle Traceability System. Patni's solution enables Farm Express to trace cattle throughout their life cycle by accumulating and providing the following information.
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Trace of parentage, property, holding and feed records to enable documentation and inspection; trace of documents throughout the supply chain for and during audits; a national level database to help government agencies control activities like movement and butchering |
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Record of annual audits, farm visits by authorized agencies and veterinaries |
To enable easy and efficient capture and retrieval of information, Patni equipped handheld devices with salient features like:
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Voice Recognition Processing System |
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Infra red (IR) printer interface |
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Interface with other external devices like fat measure |
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Web browser interface to the embedded device |
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Radio Frequency (RF) reads |
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Online upgradation of embedded applications |
The Patni-Farm Express relationship was strengthened with Patni setting up an Offshore Development Centre (ODC) for Farm Express
Patni also won several onsite assignments from Farm Express. These cutting-edge technology projects working closely with Cadence
The Technology
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VxWorks, XML Parser, HTTP, Web Client, Windows NT Server 4.0 |
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RF and IRDA interfaces |
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Voice recognition |
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The Benefits
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Patni's proven onsite-offshore capability ensured focus on quality, flexibility and cost efficiency. |
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Applications are customized to interface with Farm Express' national database in Australia; the database is also optimised for embedded devices |
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Farm Express can avail of vast new business opportunities, as the Cattle Traceability System is easily customisable for tracing other farm animals like sheep and pigs |
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Farm Express has found a huge potential market in South American countries like Uruguay, Brazil and Chile |
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