Aida stands for "Allianzen für Informations- und Dienstleistungs-Agenturen (Alliances for information and service agencies) for the horizontal pooling of coordination tasks in quality, health and risk management in the meat industry.

The networking project is primarily designed to improve competitiveness and innovative economic power in animal husbandry cooperatives (Viehverwertungsgenossenschaften – VVG) and producer communities (Erzeugergemeinschaften – EZG) which generally have small and medium-sized structures. They represent the actual target group of the innovation programme's promotion concept. Through developing technical and organisational concepts in the organisational structure and workflow management of inter-company quality, health and risk management systems of supplier chains for the meat industry the VVGs and EZGs for the first time receive further-reaching competencies. They will become a type of network integrators in supplier management of slaughterhouses, which decisively strengthens their competitive position.

Based on methodical-theoretical models from three different fields of research (preventive health management, business administration of the agro-business and marketing for agricultural products and food) innovations are being simultaneously initiated in two sectors:

1. Organisational innovations: the models developed by the two cooperating university working groups of the universities of Bonn and Göttingen lead to changes in the structure and workflow management of VVGs and EZGs cooperating with each other. Consequently the joint services portfolio for the keepers of the animals and also the slaughterhouses can be improved. The target is to work out a structural-organisational framework concept for establishing service agencies in the meat industry. New service portfolios in the areas of quality-oriented incentive and reward systems for suppliers, quality marketing and sales promotion as well as value-added coordination and relations management forms the basis for this. This also involves the AHC and PCO networks taking on greater responsibility for the total value-added chain.
   
   
2. Technical innovations: these are derived from a scientifically worked out concept for using web-based data warehouse solutions for inter-company data interchange and the chain-oriented quality and risk management. The concepts of these innovations are to be initially tailored to the organisational changes in three EZG and VVG groups "North, West and South" and subsequently compiled into an organisational-technical proposal for an overall concept.

The concepts that are drawn up contribute towards enabling animal husbandry enterprises to better utilise inter-company information systems as tools for quality assurance, error-prevention and cost-cutting working methods. This hence enables the EZGs and VVGs to assume the role of network integrators in supplier management of slaughterhouses and consequently contribute towards the competitiveness of the meat producing chains in addition to performing their previous wholesaling function. The project targets hence particularly comply with the promotion aims underlined in the announcement on the innovation programme issued by the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMELV) on 9 January 2007.