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 USDA Commodity Network - portal type services provided by web-enabled database with a pronounced ROI
 
Each year the U.S. Department of Agriculture purchases specific agricultural farm products where needed or mandated by Congress in order to sustain domestic farm industries at risk due to threatening market, environmental, or economic conditions.  The bulk of these commodity purchases are earmarked for use by the public school system.  There are roughly 27 million school children who receive meals (lunch and in some cases breakfast and snack) through this program.  In some parts of the country the program is considered to play a vital role in the daily nutritional needs of the school children.  The challenges of the program are very considerable and include : 1)efficient conversion of raw commodities to food products acceptable and desirable to school aged children, 2)efficient and timely transportation, 3)spoilage containment, 4)high percent utilization and preserved food value.  Each of these alone is considerable, together they present a tremendous challenge which the program faces with every commodity acquisition.  Department personnel determined that if the organizations which produce products for the public school sector (Suppliers) and the school lunch planners and buyers (Schools) communicated more effectively about what products were made and offered, derived from which agricultural commodities, and which products were desirable and in demand, then schools could respond quickly to commodity availability.  The expected result would be higher utilization, lower spoilage, more efficient transformation into target food products.  The annual expenditure in commodities runs to 3 to 4.5 billion dollars.  Every percent utilization is therefore worth about $30 million per year!  The opportunity for a high ROI on such a system was deemed high.

Solutions Engineering was contracted to design and build a database architecture which would meet the needs of the above related system, and write the software which would enable all users (Suppliers, Schools, and USDA) to access the database limited to their particular role or set of operations.  The “USDA Network Commodity” system was designed and constructed.  It provides a means for all Supplier and Schools to register with the site.  Once registered their roles and views are defined.  Suppliers can add/edit/remove food products on the site.  The site supports full nutrition profiles for the food items, along with storage requirements, description, bar code, preparation notes, serving size, servings per package, and additional information, as well as Supplier definable links if they wish to provide photographs of servings in the context of other menu items, or any additional information they deem useful.  The Schools provide profile information on their organization and their meal provisioning needs ­ virtually everything deemed useful in determining what types of products may prove desirable for the School.  The system supports automated e-mail information/quote requests, nutritional profiles, and food details.  The system provides a powerful food profile search capability which enables users focus on the food items derived from currently supported commodities.

The system was built in 120 days with Java, HTML, ASP, and Photoshop.  The system runs on MS SQL Server 7.0 on IIS/NT4.0 using SMTP e-mail services.  The database is fully ODBC compliant supporting remote reporting capability with Crystal Reports.  The project also included providing an automated importation of food item entries from a Food Profile database maintained by the National Agricultural Library.  This provided roughly 5,800 food items in the initial database

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