Building Sustainable Supply Chains Through Product Traceability

Building Sustainable Supply Chains Through Product Traceability

by Christine C. Akselsen

https://kezzler.com/building-sustainable-supply-chains-through-product-traceability

As global supply chain woes continue, traceability can play a role in building and maintaining sustainable supply chains. It will come as a surprice to no one that the increasing complexity and volatility of supply chains – regardless of the reasins for volatility – create disruption acros all sectors of the global economy. Much of this complexity is attributable to intricate interconnections among unrelated and unpredictable factors, including problems with ground and sea transport, Brexit-related friction, microchip shortages, the war in Ukraine, continuing zero-Covid policies in China, climate-related commodities instability and price increases and inflation, just to name a few. While it is not possible to unravel or prevent some of these problems, it is possible to do something to make supply chains more predictable.

Across industries, companies are turning to digitization to not only ameliorate some of the challenges highlighted above, but also to, as Accenture describes it. Visibility and traceability of products is central to meeting these expectations. Lac of traceability is the main abstacle to safe and sustainble consumption and is a massive problem for governments, companies, and consumers. Companies are expected to take full responsibility for products the put on the market, but in reality, they have very little information about or control over manufactured pproducts beyond the point of manufacturing.

In a world in which supply chains are increasingly complex, and society is reliant on their efficiency, making the full product journey visible through traceability is key to securing transparency and trust. If companies lack visibility into their supply chain, they cannot address very common but inherently more controllable supply chain problems, such as black/gray market sales, product diversion, illegal labor practices, and unsustainable production.

Kezzler’s patented serialization technology creates a unique digital identity for avery single product to create a digital footprint. This unique identity joins all the relevant data and information for that specific item in a single place, tracing it throughout its journey through the supply chain. This data can be made available to companies, their customers, and regulatory bodies in tailored formats throughout each stage of the supply chain journey. One of the challenges of supply chain digitization initiatives is that they create cast amounts of data, which can slow systems response. Kezzler’s technology has been purpose built to overcome performance berriers and achieve high transaction, low latency response times even in a large volume application.

Traceability technology is already widely used by industry leaders worldwide for supply chain visibility. Product traceability will continue to become more of a must-have rather than a nice to have and will be a critical risk management tool in fulfilling both corporate ESG initiatives and regulatory complaince. In fact, tracealibility is at the heart of the European Union’s Green Deal and its Digital Product Passport mandates. The dual demands of regulation and consumer interest will help drive product traceability further into the mainstream, and ultimately product traceability will show its value through the insight it provides for supply chain management as well.