Track and trace

This article's lead section contains information that is not included elsewhere in the article. If the information is appropriate for the lead of the article, this information should also be included in the body of the article. (November 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Track and trace" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

In the distribution and logistics of many types of products, track and trace or tracking and tracing concerns a process of determining the current and past locations (and other information) of a unique item or property. Mass serialization is the process that manufacturers go through to assign and mark each of their products with a unique identifier such as an Electronic Product Code (EPC) for track and trace purposes. The marking or "tagging" of products is usually completed within the manufacturing process through the use of various combinations of human readable or machine readable technologies such as DataMatrix barcodes or RFID.

The track and trace concept can be supported by means of reckoning and reporting of the position of vehicles and containers with the property of concern, stored, for example, in a real-time database. This approach leaves the task to compose a coherent depiction of the subsequent status reports.

Another approach is to report the arrival or departure of the object and recording the identification of the object, the location where observed, the time, and the status. This approach leaves the task to verify the reports regarding consistency and completeness. An example of this method might be the package tracking provided by shippers, such as the United States Postal Service, Deutsche Post, Royal Mail, United Parcel Service, AirRoad, or FedEx.