The Perfect Order needs to include the right data

In February 2025, Supply Chain Management Review published my Perfect Order article series. This 12-part series with accompanying Explainer articles expanded upon an article written by Dr. Edward J. Marien 20 years earlier where he described the eight Customer’s Bill of Rights (8Rs) that accompany any order. Dr. Marien’s 8Rs state that a customer as a right to:

The Right Product
In the Right Quantity
From the Right Source
To the Right Destination
In the Right Condition
At the Right Time
With the Right Documentation
At the Right Cost

It would not be an incorrect assumption that embedded within each of the named rights, and as part of all of the documentation as I expanded upon what that could encompass (e.g., electronic transactions, labels, tags, paperwork), the data has to be right. But perhaps a ninth right—“With the Right Data”—should be added if, for no other reason, as a reminder and to reinforce some of the regulatory and compliance requirements companies are encountering.

One example of this is the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) 204 compliance requirement. The initial deadline was January 20, 2026, but has been extended until July 20, 2028. However, I can tell you from experience that retailers and grocers are not waiting to collect this data from their vendors whose products are on the FTL (Food Traceability List); they want this data now.

The FSMA data is primarily focused on a product’s lot traceability, manufacturing date, and expiration date. The methodology for conveying this data is EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). The transaction used to carry this data from the vendor to the retailer or grocer is the EDI856 ASN (Advance Ship Notice).

If your food or beverage company has been keeping track of data and manufacturing and expiration dates in spreadsheets, those days are effectively over. Yes, that meets FDA requirements, but it falls short of supply chain necessities. This data needs to be integrated into your ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system and/or tied into your production management system so it can be integrated with your EDI system or platform. Manual data entry is too prone to error and too time-intensive to continue to rely on.

Integrating FSMA data into your operations is a project that needs to be planned. Not complying with this FDA mandate is likely a regulatory problem. Not complying with this supply chain vendor compliance requirement makes your company a disruptive vendor. As I’ve stated before: In a commoditized world, execution is the competitive edge. If your competitors are complying and your company isn’t, whose products are your retail and grocery customers likely to focus on purchasing? The ones that increase risk due to a lack of the right regulatory data, or the ones that decrease risk because the right data was included?

Customers have a right to the right data. Make sure you uphold this—and all of—Dr. Marien’s customer rights in your supply chain execution.