Track and Trace
Definition
Track and trace is the capability to follow products forward through the supply chain (tracking) and reconstruct their history backward (tracing) at the shipment, batch, or serial-number level.
In Practice
Tracking answers 'where is it now?' — the live status of an order or shipment. Tracing answers 'where has it been?' — which lot of raw material went into which finished batch, shipped to which customers. Both rest on capturing identifiers (lot numbers, serial numbers, SSCC labels) at every handoff.
For regulated industries, traceability is law: pharmaceutical serialization (DSCVA in the US, FMD in Europe) and food safety rules (FSMA 204) require rapid, precise recall capability. For everyone else, it is the difference between recalling one lot and recalling everything.
Example: when a contaminated ingredient lot is identified, a food company with strong trace data pulls the exact 3,200 affected cases from 14 DCs within hours — instead of destroying a month of production and issuing a public blanket recall.
Related Terms
Barcode scanning is the use of optical scanners to read printed codes (UPC, Code 128, QR, GS1 labels) that identify items, cartons, locations, and shipments, confirming every physical move in the system.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) uses small tags that transmit their identity via radio waves, allowing items, cases, or pallets to be identified and counted without line-of-sight scanning.
Blockchain in Supply ChainBlockchain in supply chain uses a shared, tamper-evident digital ledger so multiple trading partners can record and verify transactions — provenance, custody, certifications — without trusting a single central party.
Supply Chain Control TowerA supply chain control tower is a centralized dashboard and decision hub that pulls data from many systems to give end-to-end visibility of orders, inventory, and shipments, with alerts and workflows for exceptions.