What are Traceability Solutions?
Traceability solutions for your business, or track and trace results, allow businesses to document data about the physical movement of things and products, both internally and throughout the supply chain. As each piece, large or small, progresses through the manufacturing and payload process, traceability results use barcoding or RFID technology to identify and “follow” them every step of the way.
Traceability Solutions for Supply Chains with Examples
Eventually, traceability collects and shares data that answers the five W questions – the “who,” “what,” “when” “where,” and “why,” of the supply chain, from manufacturing to logistics and everything in between. For illustration, a traceability result would give information on who supplied a particular element, when and where it was delivered, who entered the payload, and more.
Also read: 5 Advanced Technology Examples to Improve Your Business
What Sectors Can Use “Track & Trace” or Traceability Solutions?
Track and trace results factor into nearly every assiduity these days, in one way or another. You’re most likely to hear about supply chain traceability in the food & beverage, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, retail, and warehousing sectors.
Benefits of Supply Chain Traceability
Traceability solutions for your business provides significant value to businesses with complex supply chains and distribution networks by detecting resemblant significances, perfecting distributor supply operation, simplifying product recalls, helping with regulatory compliance, helping achieve sustainability pretensions, and communicating product origin to end-customers. We explore each of these benefits of traceability in further detail below.
Benefit# 1 Detect Resemblant Significances and Product Diversion; Monitor Distribution Partners
Brands use supply chain data to understand how products are reaching the request, how their distribution network is performing, and whether or not distributors are violating their contracts and dealing to unauthorized requests. One key challenge for supply chain traceability programs is how to capture data in the “middle” of the supply chain when products are in the guardianship of the distributors or channel partners. In some sectors, similar as food and beverage and artificial goods, the brands have limited influence over the distributor and therefore limited or no capability to gather supply chain data from them.
Reasons why it’s imperative to get supply chain data from distributors include:
- Distributors nearly guard how they distribute to help being disintermediated by the brand.
- Distributors have a fixed workflow across all brands they distribute for, and are unintentional to use special systems or bias to manually overlook beaters, pallets, or boxes for just one brand.
- It’s not doable to perform data integrations with each distributors ’ ERP or Warehouse Management systems due to technology limitations.
Ultramodern traceability systems address the below challenges for carrying supply chain data from distributors in two ways
- Have a target request for each product. The traceability system maintains a destination or target request for each product via its unique law. Examining data from endpoints in the supply chain – consumers, clients, professional users, or inspectors, reveal if products were distributed in an unauthorized way.
- Make it easy for distributors to checkup products without an IT integration or devoted tackle. Smartphone- grounded mobile apps for surveying QR codes, RFID solutions, and NFC on boxes, beaters, and pallets can make it significantly easier for distributors to fill in eyeless spots in your supply chain, avoiding the need for expensive integrations across numerous stakeholders.
End- user data from connected packaging campaigns is a crucial benefit for brands. By incentivizing users to “overlook ” or engage with the packaging, further data can be gathered while offering end-users useful information.
Benefit# 2 Demand Prediction (Supply and Demand Operation), Distributor Supply operation, Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP)
Traceability solutions for your business can enable better demand prediction and distributor supply operation, with two orders of benefits:
- Visibility into distribution center operations (both in- house and external distributors) can be used for projecting demand, perfecting downstream supply operation, and sales and operations planning (S&OP). This is especially important for products which have seasonality or elevations. Better demand operation results in lower dearths or overstock and better cash inflow operation.
- Knowing the type and quantum of supply sitting in distribution centers can make the brand apprehensive of old products which need to be expedited to market and replaced by newer ones.
Benefit# 3 Trace Recalls, Returns, Damaged Goods and Faults, and Products With Warranty Claims
Traceability results can help identify products that have been recalled and trace them through their distribution path and farther upstream to their manufacturing and product. Traditionally, tracing recalled or damaged goods have been done manually using textbook canons with batch, lot, and periodical figures published on products. This approach lacks unit- position supply chain traceability data and a channel for client engagement. In ultramodern traceability results, unit-position markers on each product give distribution and shipping information for each item, including the product data (batch, lot) and logistics or shipping data (box, crate, pallet) across points in the supply chain. Companies use this data to identify issues in their distribution that are impacting product quality and in turn their profit perimeters.
Benefit# 4 Regulatory and Trade Restrictions Compliance
Numerous sectors are regulated similar that products and their constituents, raw accoutrements, or other inputs must be traceable to the unit position. This can only be fulfilled at a reasonable cost using serialization – the printing, labeling, or indeed ray marking of unique canons on products and packaging.
Exemplifications of regulatory conditions related to product serialization include:
- The pharmaceutical assiduity is needed to use serial canons on products for the purpose of traceability at the batch and lot position.
- Medical devices bear use of government-registered unique device identifiers (UDIs).
- In numerous requests tobacco products must have unique identifiers.
- Foods in the U.S. which contain GMO constituents must be labeled as similar — one officially accepted system is using QR canons.
- Alcoholic or other products which aren’t fairly permitted to be exported to a specific request are tracked by brands to help their entrance into those markets.
Also read: RFID Solutions Boosts Efficiency and Transparency for Cash Couriers
Final Studies
Traceability solutions for your business is a pivotal aspect of managing your business operations. Are you ready to get started? Setting up your own supply chain traceability system might feel daunting, but Aeologic Technologies is here to help. We have easy-to-use, scalable results for all of your track and trace requirements, no matter what assiduity you are in. Communicate us today if you would like to know how we can help you to make an effective traceability system. Together, we can cover your brand, insure regulatory compliance, and fight attacks and theft.
