What is Practical Compliance?

In many ways, and in many environment, traceability is a challenge that forces us to rethink processes. Green Leaf TraceKits allows the packing operation to remain largely unchanged. TraceKits can be deployed a few days before packing begins and remain as long as the crop holds out. When the packing is complete, the TraceKits are shipped back to Green Leaf to be refurbished, recycled and re-programmed. During the off-season, you don't have to worry about losing the kits or any of the components. At the appropriate time Green Leaf will ship you a kit, along with any changes in equipment or software.

This means you will always have the equipment you need when you need it.

Produce is a very complex business. No two operations are ever alike. In order for software to accomplish the traceability requirements, it has to be flexible enough to handle many situations. So a system provider has two options: make the software very complex with many options and configurations, or write a custom application for each situation.

• Complex Canned Software

  Almost all system providers choose the first option and so they have very complex systems. Because these systems must support many possible situations, the user must make a series of choices so the software will function properly. These include different screens, unused entry fields, sequences of button clicks and a lot of training for the guy on the frontline. If procedures are not followed, errors will be created and the steps to correct the problems may also be complicated.

• Customized Software

  The advantage of customized software is that it can only include the steps that are actually needed. It need not be concerned about the many ways OTHER packing operations work and it only needs to be flexible enough to handle your needs. That's the good news. The bad news is custom software is expensive to design and can take a long time. Also, as your needs change, it might not have the flexibility to handle the new situation.

A New Kind of Customized Software

Modern programming languages are amazingly complex. They are powerful, but hard to use, hard to understand and subject to bugs. Green Leaf Logic is owned by a company called Xiiip Enterprises. Xiiip has invented (actually re-invented) a programming language called "Xiiip" (pronounced ZIP). In 1988, a database programming language named dBASE became so dominant that the U.S. Justice Department started an anti-trust action against it. The fear was that it would monopolize database programming. This was in the years before Microsoft's Windows operating system took over. So how did dBASE become that dominant?

Why the Xiiip programming language is a game changer

Millions of people who had never programmed before bought dBASE and began to write applications. It was so easy to learn, people mostly taught themselves how to do it. Since there was no Internet the only training resources were books with examples. Imagine how easy the language had to be for ordinary hobiest to write programs for their Aunt's flower shop or their neighbor's auto repair shop. These kind of hobby programmers no longer exist. Programming today is a hundred times more difficult today than it was then. Xiiip was developed to bring back the productivity of that time.

All TraceKits are programmed using Xiiip

The reason we can include a custom program in every TraceKit we sell is that it only takes us a few minutes to a few hours to completely write a customized application. This means you get results quickly. How quickly? Usually within a few days, we can have a version of the software working on the Internet so you can test it. The first version is never exactly what you want, so we typically talk with you on the phone and sometimes even make the programming changes during the call. In a short time, you can see the program works the way you want it. We also design the labels that are printed (again, this just takes a few minutes.) And if you change your mind about the way you want something to work? No problem! We will make the change. We want it to work your way.

Why is it so reliable?

The simplicity of the Xiiip programming language makes writing bug-free code a lot easier. We still make mistakes, but usually those mistakes are found during the Internet testing phase. Once the code has been proven, we build your TraceKit. Since TraceKits are designed to work completely by themselves (with no Internet or even phone lines) they must be reliable. Being reliable is not enough though. They also need to be easy to use. If the frontline workers get confused or make a mistake, you can't shut down the operation. So you have to make it easy to correct mistakes and easy for the worker to know when he is doing the job properly. If a system takes more than five minutes to learn, it is too complex. Really.

Can a TraceKit generate Invoices? No.

Can a TraceKit produce Bills of Lading? No.

Our TraceKits are designed to do one thing and do it very well: Label your cartons and pallets with PTI-compliant labels and create a comprehensive traceability record. If you need anything else, you probably already have software that does it. TrueShot, Famous, ProPak, Silver Creek, Edible Software are a few companies that are in that business.