What Does traceability Mean
Traceability is a term that was recently incorporated into the twenty-third edition of the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) . For the International Organization of Standardization (whose acronym is ISO) , traceability is the property that provides the result of a standard value, which can be linked to specific references through a continuous string of comparisons.
In other words, traceability is made up of predetermined processes that are carried out to determine the various steps that a product goes through , from its birth to its current location in the supply chain.
Specifically, when studying and establishing the traceability of a product, it is essential to proceed to identify three basic aspects of it, such as the origin of its various components, the set of processes that have been applied to the aforementioned and also both the distribution such as the location of the product in question after its delivery has been undertaken.
It is possible to distinguish between two types of traceability when seeking to know the status of a product that circulates within a logistics chain. The traceability internal acts on the internal procedures of company and takes into account the composition of the product, its handling, the machines used and other factors. The external traceability , meanwhile, add other elements to outsource information arising from internal traceability.
Ultimately, traceability is based on the registration of the traces that a product leaves while passing through the chain before reaching the final consumer. Currently, work is being done to develop a standard format that allows easy sharing and dissemination of traceability.
The intention is to develop the ability to review the trajectory and the path followed by each product, something that would allow us to know where its components come from, what are the treatments that are applied and how the distribution is specified. This would, in turn, make it possible to improve the quality of the product and increase the value for the final consumer.
In this sense, it is essential that we make known the existence of an element that is very useful and practical when establishing the traceability of a product in question. This is the case of the well-known barcode. The aforementioned is apparently a set of straight, vertical and parallel lines that represent certain information about that product, which allow it to be classified and that also incorporates a series of numbers that also give information about it.
All that information provided, by the lines and numbers, is encoded, making it necessary and vital the existence of a device, known as a reader or receiver, which is in charge of decoding it and offering the data related to the product.
In this way, we can establish that we find technological devices of this type in a multitude of places that have become habitual scenarios of our routine, such as supermarkets or ATMs. In the case of the former, what they do is read the codes that appear in food products of various kinds and in the latter they proceed to decode the codes of credit cards or bank cards.
The technology , with the combination of communication networks, the Web, wireless connectivity, satellite tracking and software specialist, helps to improve traceability.