True supply chain traceability is finally at hand

Supply chains started thousands of years ago with the advent of commerce and trade.  Trading partners shared information about their goods and services, using an agreed upon method of exchange, probably scratch marks on stone tablets in the first instance.  As the number of producers and consumers grew, each new relationship resulted in its own protocol for information exchange.

Improbably, this organic, ad hoc methodology has largely persisted through thousands of years of global expansion involving millions of trading partners and billions of daily transactions.  However, and not surprisingly, this state of affairs has yielded some predictable problems, such as:

• How do I demonstrate compliance with government regulations?
• How do I deliver truthful and accurate information about my products to consumers?
• How do I respond to disruptions from unforeseen events, such as global pandemics, natural disasters, or political upheaval?
• How do I discover which of my production batches are subject to a recall due to a defective supplier input?  (And how does that supplier track down other products made from that defective batch?)
• How do I ensure that my distributors and wholesalers are in compliance with their agreements?
• How do I honor commitments to my downstream customers without commensurate guarantees from my upstream suppliers?
• How do I prevent - or at least detect - errors in production due to inaccurate supplier data?

It’s instructive to take a step back and consider that a supply chain, at its core, is a network, very much like other networks we are familiar with - the Internet, the World Wide Web, the cellular network, financial networks, and so on.  But, these networks, unlike supply chains, adhere to a set of global standards which govern the interactions between parties.  You likely know the names of some of these standards: TCP/IP, HTTP, 5G, WiFi, SMS, to name a few.  Without universal agreement to adopt and utilize these standards, we would not have the Internet, the web, mobile phones, texting, email, electronic banking, and on and on.

And yet, global supply chains continue to labor under a proprietary, point to point architecture first conceived circa 10,000 BC.

But here is the good news: the standards that hold the key to modernizing the global supply chain now exist.  We are finally at a point where we can bring supply chains into the modern era.

There are two key standards involved, both administered by GS1. They go by the names Digital Link and EPCIS.  Digital Link specifies the format for how tradeable units are identified and labeled, be they product items, cases, pallets, or containers.  It represents an item’s ‘digital twin’ and acts as a gateway to far more information than a 1D barcode.  Its companion, EPCIS (and specifically the 2.0 version) standardizes what data is captured in a supply chain event, e.g. the movement of goods from one location to another, along with the format for storing, sharing, and retrieving that data.

Used together, these two standards promise to utterly transform the global supply chain.  They will bring about an end to brittle and non scalable point to point communications; exorbitantly expensive system integrations; and erratic, error prone production.  Instead, we’ll have push button interoperability, predictable schedules, robust operations, and flexible responses to unforeseen events.  In other words, exactly what we have come to expect from the other networks we use every day.

Let’s acknowledge that the momentous change we are embarking on will not happen overnight, nor will it happen in a vacuum.  Even though market forces inevitably push towards standards, incumbents invested in the status quo will work hard to slow play the rollout.

Nevertheless, we firmly believe that we are on an inexorable path to where Digital Link and EPCIS will become the lingua franca of supply chains.  And at TrackVision AI, we are betting on it.

Why?  Because it just makes sense.

If you’d like to see a live demonstration of everything discussed here, please get in touch at https://trackvision.ai/contact