Being required and regulated in the food and pharmaceutical sectors, traceability has now become a major factor for many sectors. With the development of Industry 4.0, SMEs and large companies increasingly need to have a traceability strategy for their products in order to guarantee maximum quality to their customers.
What are the challenges of industrial traceability?
The main challenge of traceability is to meet a need of data. The identification and the research of information can be carried out throughout the life cycle of a product or a part: from the transformation of raw materials, through all the stages of manufacture and assembly, distribution, use and finally after-sales. These data will be important in case of non-conformity of the final product for example. In this case, thanks to the identification, it is possible to trace the entire product’s journey to obtain the essential information needed to correct the problem.
In which sectors is traceability used?
Many industries use traceability in their manufacturing and distribution processes for a variety of reasons:
Guarantee product quality in the agri-food sector :
In the food industry, traceability allows to guarantee the quality of the products to the consumers and to bring them information: expiration date, origin of the products, information on the producers as well as the transformation of the product. The access to this information is very simple in most cases thanks to the labeling or on the packaging.
Marking of medical instruments and consumables :
In the medical field, the issue of traceability allows to greatly optimize the organization of health professionals. It is an ideal way to identify the actors, the chronology, the means used (instruments and consumables). Traceability allows, for example, to know if an instrument has already been sterilized or if a prosthesis is destined for the right patient.
Marking needs in various industries :
In the industrial world, mainly in the automotive and aeronautics sectors, one of the main issues is to be able to anticipate possible customer returns and target defective products.
This is particularly used when a manufacturing defect is detected. The producer can easily carry out product recalls by targeting a batch of parts thanks to the batch numbers and/or serial numbers recorded in the database. This allows the manufacturer to be proactive in the management of failures and to avoid that customers end up with an unusable product.
In the vast majority of cases for these sectors, it is implemented thanks to dot peen marking and laser marking technologies, which allows to mark directly the material of the part.
Traceability in the luxury industry :
Traceability has also made its way into the luxury sector. Being a market enormously affected by counterfeiting, large luxury companies are starting to integrate traceability solutions. The main objective is to fight against imitations of their products. They can now reassure consumers about the authenticity of the products they are going to buy.
Some actors of the luxury sector and mainly of the textile industry have been affected by various scandals for a few years, especially on questions of values and ethics. Today, traceability makes it possible to guarantee that products are manufactured in factories that respect the well-being of workers, are sensitive to eco-responsibility and share common values.
Tracking for transport and logistics optimization :
The traceability in the fields of transport and logistics has a goal of “tracking”. That means that it allows to locate products and parts to analyze their geographical movements.
As we can observe when tracking a delivery, each “checkpoint” records the receipt of the package and shares the information directly online. This is also a good way to reduce the number of claims and losses.
It can also optimize the logistics process by greatly facilitating fastidious inventory missions.
All these examples above are the main sectors where traceability comes into play, but not all uses can be cited in this article. Multiple uses of traceability can be diverted to meet many other needs and in any sector.
What information is required for traceability?
The list of recordable data is not exhaustive! It varies according to the company. The needs of a company change according to its sector and therefore its needs, its strategy or its logistics.
For example, it will not record the same information if its need is to guarantee the quality of its products or to manage its stock more easily.
Some examples of information that can be recorded:
- Time and date of manufacture of the part
- Places of manufacture/assembly
- Identity of the operator
- Lot number and serial number
- Product reference
- Suppliers of the raw material
- And many others…
Note that in the industry, information is very often stored in the form of Datamatrix codes and QR codes in order to record a large amount of data in a very small area.
In summary, what is traceability?
To put it simply, traceability allows you to record data in order to follow the different stages of a product. These different information meets different needs such as the optimization of the organization, security, warranty, …)
A good example is the use of traceability for the now mandatory Bicycode regulation. This regulation imposes on bicycle sellers and retailers in France a traceability of bicycles to fight against stealing. A marking is made on the frame of the bike and then recorded in a database with the customer’s information.
