Traceability through serialization

Reduce counterfeiting - increase consumer information

The ability to trace individual products through the supply chain is becoming increasingly important to fight counterfeiting and increase consumer safety. This applies to the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, tobacco as well as to the food & beverage industries.

While traditional lot and batch level traceability provides a level of supply chain risk management, serialization provides item-level traceability. This means individual items can be traced from manufacture, right through distribution and retail to end consumer use.  Among the many benefits this includes ensuring individual items are authentic and whether they have been distributed via legitimate channels.

There are two main challenges to achieve a comprehensive traceability through serialization solution:

1. Managing the data internally, with supply chain partners, and with the consumer oriented servers
2. Changing the production hardware and processes.

To meet these challenges two main ‘philosophies’ have arisen to deal with the new data management and production process demands -  the single-system point-to-point (closed single supplier) solution or the flexible ‘layer’ solution. By separating data handling from the production line, the flexible layer solution brings numerous systems benefits.