Creating an Investigation

The Investigations feature in FoodLogiQ stitches together your Critical Tracking Events (CTEs) to achieve real-time visualization of the products and locations in your supply chain. An investigation can be used to assess the movement of product through locations you own and external locations. You can also kick off a withdrawal with the products found in your investigation. To learn more about this process, see the article Creating a Withdrawal from an Investigation.

Setting the Scope

When creating an investigation, you have the option to search by products or locations.

• Product Investigation: Finds all events involving the selected products, within the given time period. When searching, you can filter by suppliers, product types, affected dates, and lot codes.
• Location Investigation: Finds all events involving the selected locations, within the given time period. When searching, you can filter by location information such as city, state, region, or distributor.

Components of an Investigation

When you view the results of your investigation, you will land on the details page that contains the overview widgets, scope inputs, and overview map.

Scope Overview: The widgets provide a snapshot of the data found in your investigation. When conducting a product investigation, the Total Products widget matches the number of products selected in your search. The Locations Affected widget displays the number of locations where the product was found.

When conducting a location investigation, the Locations Affected widget matches the number of locations selected in your search. The Total Products widget displays the number of products found at these locations. In some cases, you will see a tilde (~) next to the quantity of product. For more information on this symbol and other notifications, see the article Data Accuracy in an Investigation.

Investigation Scope: The scope displays the search parameters you’ve selected. If your investigation returns no matching events, or if you’d simply like to adjust your scope, click “Edit Scope” to be taken back to the search options.

Overview, Events, Products, and Locations tabs

Overview: A map of the locations, with valid addresses, found in the CTEs of your investigation

Events: A summary of each of the events found in your investigation. Cards are grouped by event type, date, and location. For example, all Transformation events occurring at the same location are grouped in one card. When selecting that card, you’ll see that location on a map as well as a timeline view.

The timeline view displays the inputs, outputs, and event link. If there’s more than one event grouped in this card, you’ll see this in a section below. Remember that all events in one timeline happened at the same location.

Shipping and Receiving Events

Since we can use Shipping and Receiving events to tell a story, events of either type with the same ‘From’ location are grouped together. When viewing the map of a shipping/receiving card, you’ll notice connecting lines between ‘From’ and ‘To’ locations that help to visualize the movement of product.

In the timeline, the ‘From’ location remains at the top, while each event with a different ‘To’ location comprises each section below. A section on the timeline can utilize both shipping and receiving CTE information, depending on the information present. For example, if Receiving events are missing, the table information (product info, quantities, units) is based on the Shipping event data. To view these events, click on the “View # Events” link in the top right of the table.

Products tab: A table showing all products searched for (if conducting a product investigation) or all products found in the locations you’ve searched for (if conducting a location investigation). Your business must have access to the products for them to be shown in the table; they must be either a My Product or a Product Shared with Me.

Locations tab: A table showing all locations searched for (if conducting a location investigation) or all locations where your searched products were found (if conducting a product investigation). Your business must have access to the locations for them to be shown in the table; they must be either a My Location or a Location Shared with Me.

These products and locations are automatically pulled into a withdrawal list, located at the top of the page, so you can create a withdrawal with ease. To learn more about this feature, see the article Creating a Withdrawal from an Investigation.

Next to the Withdrawal List button is a three-dot menu, which allows you to Export FSMA 204 ESS. Click this button to export three .csv files in a zipped folder. One .csv includes location data from the events in your investigation. Another .csv includes product data from the events in your investigation. The third includes all event data including source and destination locations, and product data. This format is compliant with the updates made in Section 204 of the Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA).