TRANSPARENCY.

Transparency is being able to prove that a product is what the labelling says it is, including knowing all key ingredients and processes throughout the entire supply journey.

The quest for heightened transparency has increased the need to understand exactly what has happened during the supply journey. Technology plays a big part in this and the solutions generally fall into two areas.

Those that Identify – these can usually be tampered with

Those that Authenticate –  these usually can’t be tampered with

On the identifying front, machine readable codes, including ID e.g. GS1 and 2D codes, have been around for many years. These enable good product identification, allowing information to be passed efficiently up and down the supply chain. But in the end information is still open to tampering.

Fiber Tag

FiberTag is an anti-counterfeiting labelling solution. It’s a print medium incorporating chaosmetric security technology with randomly dispersed coloured security fibres which are then associated to a serialized 2D code to create a unique fingerprint for each label.

This provides intrinsic authentication that is claimed to be impossible to duplicate. A QR code app on a smartphone displays what the fibre pattern should look like if authentic.

The market take up so far has been in the higher end drinks, food and consumer products such as champagne, wine and baby food. This technology is likely to be game changer for high volume consumer products. However, it’s limited to authenticating the end product, not the process journey.

 AUTHENTIFICATION. 

Going further to prevent tampering requires a quantum shift in supply chain collaboration. Various technologies have emerged that form parts in the wider authenticity process. For some industries, many ‘parts’ will be necessary to form the totally authenticated chain of custody. Some interesting technologies and products in this mix are RFID, Prooftag and Blockchain.

RFID

RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) technology has been around for a while. In a supply chain context, it’s a smart tag attached to physical shipping containers, such as cases, pallets or containers.  As these tags pass through process points, they receive or upload data, which is then passed upstream to whatever system is set up to receive it.

It requires a lot of physical infrastructure, including recycling of the smart devices (like returnable pallets), reading hardware at all tracking points, and a process to affix tags to cases or pallets. These devices also need a communication protocol to connect to all networks along the chain.

This technology has evolved to incorporate tamper proof securitisation and tracking of the product or packaging unit.

TOTAL UPTIME

CLOUD GROWTH

SCALABILITY