| 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
Visit
this site with Username = "visitor" and password
= "visitor9"
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Customer
Profile
Past
Performance
Agencies
and Companies
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