Is traceability the future for businesses? It’s time to prepare.

Veracity Protocol
4 min readAug 19, 2021

Traceability is the capability to track and trace all stages of a product’s lifecycle, from the purchase of raw material, production, to final sale. As product quality standards have continued to improve in recent years, traceability has become a necessity across nearly every industry. It is essential information that manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors record and rely on to make sure that a product’s history can be fully traced.

Manufacturers must be prepared for situations when a product quality problem occurs and need to quickly find an effective solution. Too slow of a response can lead to distrust among customers or business partners and have lasting effects for the company. In addition, consumer protection laws are strict, and many companies can be forced to recall their products due to such issues.

With supply chain traceability, manufacturers can easily investigate or recall products when a problem occurs.

The term traceability is most often applied to supply chains. Manufacturers can track deliveries of their products and consumers can see the product’s origins. With supply chain traceability, manufacturers can easily investigate or recall products when a problem occurs. Customers can also take advantage of this and select the most reliable items without worrying about issues like incorrect labeling.

With the right traceability solution, you can track the provenance and journey of products and their inputs from the very start of the supply chain process to the end use case.

Supply Chain Traceability

Traceability is important for every company, but for some sectors such as pharmaceuticals or food, it is critical. It helps meet regulatory requirements, increases efficiency, engages participants in the supply chain, and builds trust with customers who gain insight into the product origin and journey.

With the right solution, companies can lower costs and prevent compliance issues, while protecting customers and employees.

Traceability is also key for companies that want to make and verify social or environmental sustainability claims (e.g. carbon offset). For such verifications, it is essential to define sustainability goals, incorporate data capture and validation methods, and choose the right technology. With the right solution, companies can lower costs and prevent compliance issues, while protecting customers and employees.

Identification and localization technologies are very important tools for traceability.

Implementing a traceability system requires the ability to identify products and keep track of product routes and selected data for further use. This means that identification and localization technologies are very important tools for traceability. Product identification is important in the product’s journey and can save a lot of time and labor if handled properly. The more information the traceability system can provide (e.g. production time, conditions, batch number), the more effectively the product can be recalled. This reduces the loss of money and reputation for the company. Currently, the most commonly used technologies for identification and localization are barcodes, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags, and alphanumeric codes.

But there’s a big problem with these technologies: high cost. To apply tags to products, companies must invest money and make alterations to their manufacturing or packaging processes. Another concern is accuracy and reliability. Tags are manufactured all together, and companies often run into the issues of defects and malfunctioning tags. They also lack security, as they can be easily copied, and are highly vulnerable to tampering and third-party manipulation.

Veracity Protocol’s technology has 99.9% accuracy with real-world applicability and works in various light conditions, angles, and on many materials.

Veracity Protocol solves all these concerns with the Physical Codeᵀᴹ — which cannot be copied or manipulated because it is based on an item’s unique material structure. Unlike tags, chips, or invisible markers, this allows a highly accurate (99.9%) and quick authentication system that is non-invasive to the product.

Veracity Protocol enables any camera to create a tamper-proof Physical Code™ based on an item’s material structure. This secures its authenticity, identity, and security — without special hardware, embedded tags, chips, or markers.

Veracity Protocol’s technology has real-world applicability and works in various light conditions, angles, and on most materials. Our technology can be seamlessly integrated within the manufacturing process and is also cost-efficient at scale at a fraction of the price of QR codes or RFID tags, making it a cheaper, greener, and more effective alternative for many use cases. Consumers can easily authenticate products using only a smartphone camera.

Traceability can help any company better understand and effectively respond to the important risks and opportunities in their supply chains. Veracity Protocol is always here to discuss this, so don’t hesitate to reach out at hello@veracityprotocol.org.

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Veracity Protocol is an award-winning startup that builds a Vision AI Standard to protect people and products in the digital world. The standard guarantees the highest level of trust and security for verifying the identity, authenticity, and integrity of physical objects using a smartphone.

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Veracity Protocol

The Standard of Trust for Physical Objects • Protect anything with Vision AI / #traceability #trust #authentication #protection #security