An update on the NAFEM Data Protocol

By Lisa White, Contributing Editor -- Foodservice Equipment & Supplies, 7/1/2006

"Once you pull the back-of-the-house information together with the point-of-sale systems, you have data you can do great things with." - Eric Elwell

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Although many agree that the NAFEM Data Protocol (NDP) project is still a work in progress, this doesn’t hinder the fact that its impact on the foodservice equipment industry is expected to be quite significant.

At press time, Charlie Souhrada, NAFEM’s director of member services, said the NAFEM Data Protocol Steering Committee (NDPSC) was still a few months away from announcing new developments in this project.

The NDP plan was hatched at the CoEx trade show back in 1999. At that time, national restaurant chains challenged NAFEM to develop a single standard for integrating foodservice equipment over a centralized computer network using a standardized language.

Currently, in an effort to leverage data gathered by commercial foodservice equipment, the NDPSC and the Washington, D.C.-based Association of Retail Technology Standards (ARTS), an international membership organization that is part of the National Retail Federation dedicated to reducing the costs of technology through standards, are working to create standard definitions for an ARTS-NAFEM protocol converter. This converter will act as a bi-directional translation engine between NAFEM’s Simple Network Management Protocol or SNMP, and ARTS’ eXtensible Markup Language (XML-based messages). “This will link up heavy equipment with a mainframe computer to track equipment data in real time,” Souhrada explains.

Representatives from NAFEM and ARTS will continue to meet over the coming months to discuss ways to create a communication link between NDP and ARTS’ IXRetail standards.

Bob Bruce, director of engineering at Chanhassen, Minn.-based Control Products and chairman of the NDPSC, says the joint project has been in maintenance mode for the last couple of years. “We have a subcommittee working on the ARTS effort. This has been going on for about two years and more aggressively pursued over the last year,” he says.

Integrating Technology
Many agree that this protocol converter represents the missing link in the NDP puzzle. Eran Bernstein, a member of the NDPSC and founder and vice president of engineering at Chatsworth, Calif.-based E-Control Systems, says it is best to think of this project as a tiered composition. “On the bottom is the equipment, such as cooking equipment and point-of-sale systems. The next tier is the NDP, above that is the ARTS gateway and on the top tier is the software or enterprise application. The missing link is the application or tier that will allow the NDP tier to communicate with the ARTS tier. That is what the integration between ARTS and NAFEM is bringing to the table,” he explains.

In this puzzle, the NPD team concentrates on one piece, ARTS concentrates on another and the third piece is being developed by operators who are looking for an application to bring it all together. “We’re working to help develop that,” Bernstein says.

The biggest difficulty in this project is the integration or process used to get POS systems to talk to foodservice equipment and make decisions without human intervention. Eventually, Bernstein says equipment will be able to make decisions without human intervention, thus incorporating true smart kitchen technology.

What also is coming more into play is wireless monitoring. “This is a growing trend this year,” says Tommy Orpaz, E-Control Systems’ vice president of business development. “When you have wireless equipment connected, the protocol is needed to have it implemented.” Because high cost and complicated logistics make rewiring kitchens prohibitive, wireless technology is a key component to retrofitting existing kitchens so they will be NDP-compliant.

Orpaz says the foodservice equipment industry is traditionally very conservative where technology is concerned, and that is another reason for the delay in widespread NDP compliance. With the price of the necessary components decreasing and the government’s stricter food safety regulations, Orpaz predicts a growing number of operators will begin to look more closely at how NDP can be implemented in their operations.

“[Equipment manufacturers] are adopting NDP mostly as an option [for their lines], but this is happening more often,” Bernstein says. Yet, most equipment manufacturers are requesting ways to tie it into point-of-sale systems. “The committee is receiving feedback from equipment manufacturers. We want everyone to know what it will [eventually] be used for to make sure it is adopted by the industry.”

Current Implementation
So far, restaurant chains seem slow to reap the benefits of NDP-compliant technology in their operations, according to Rick Cartwright, director of warewash engineering at Troy, Ohio-based Hobart Corp. “More people are asking questions and others are buying protocol-compliant and -enabled equipment, but they are not beating down our doors. There have been more inquiries from segments that we didn’t expect interest from, such as the healthcare sector,” he says. “This is because these facilities have immune system issues [and, for this reason, need to monitor HACCP programs closely].”

Eric Elwell, manager of KFC equipment engineering at Louisville, Ky.-based YUM! Brands, which operates more than 34,000 KFC, Long John Silver’s, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurants, says his company is not currently NDP-compliant, but views it as strategic to the development of its operations. “We continue working with NAFEM to develop the protocol. We are doing internal development work that is similar to what NAFEM is doing,” he says.

The main hurdle of the NDP from Elwell’s perspective is the aforementioned missing component that is needed from point-of-sale vendors. “What we’ve been saying is that the middle piece is what’s missing. Once this [converter protocol] is developed and released, a lot of folks will be able to take advantage of the NDP. Once you pull the back-of-the-house information together with the point-of-sale systems, you have data you can do great things with,” he says.

Unlike chain operators, equipment manufacturers have incorporated the technology necessary to make their lines NDP-compliant. At press time, 18 of these companies had NDP-compliant products that were registered with NAFEM. “We have been doing this for the last couple of years,” he says. “Liability [from a food safety perspective] is what’s driving this development,” says Robert Simmelink, executive chef and business development manager for Alto-Shaam in Menomonee Falls, Wis. “Customers see the benefit of having hard-coded data tracking time and temperatures by food name that they can review with internal HACCP audits or health inspectors.”

Time management is another driver for NDP implementation. “People switching from hand-held systems to a computerized system can save up to five hours a day on labor. It used to be employees interfacing with equipment to determine times and temperatures, whereas today’s software will be able to accomplish this automatically,” Simmelink says.

NDP will especially explode in schools, which are required to have a HACCP mandate or lose federal funds, Simmelink predicts.

Bruce agrees that the NDP hasn’t taken off like some expected it to, but says projects of this magnitude don’t evolve quickly. “The hype is over, and we have a standard that we’re working with to make it more usable and easier to implement,” he says.

Cartwright agrees that it will take more time than anticipated for chain operators to get onboard with the NDP. “It is happening slowly, and we are still a little ways off with it. I think there will be a lot more going on later this year,” he says. “Committee members are currently conducting weekly and bi-weekly phone conferences on this subject, but we still don’t have a projected completion date because this is not something you can put a timetable on. But NDP will be a force, even if it doesn’t turn out to be exactly what we anticipated. It is coming.”