 Hello and welcome back to this session on supply chain digitization the NPTEL course by the Indian Institute of Management Mumbai, I am Professor Sushmita Narayan. In the last lecture, we had seen an introduction to the concept of product tracking and traceability within supply chains and why it is important, what is the role of the same and how we can go about improving product tracking and traceability using technologies, processes as well as managing stakeholders including internal stakeholders such as people and external stakeholders. In this session, I am going to continue upon that topic in which we will have a closer look at the concept of track and trace systems in enabling product tracking and traceability and how it can become a very important aspect of managing supply chains. So, for the purpose of this specific lecture, I will be focusing on the technology aspect in track and trace systems and in the next lecture after this, we will proceed with understanding how does the technology fit in with the process, what will be the kind of elements of process design that we need to look at, the role of track and trace systems, considering the role played by the people within the organization and other external stakeholders and finally, an overview of the benefits and challenges that we see in implementing track and trace systems. Now, what do we mean by track and trace systems? Track and trace systems have become a very common kind of technology which is being used across supply chains right from sourcing to manufacturing and assembly to dispatch, delivery, transportation, last mile delivery, storage as well as consumption, we see track and trace systems being used in different forms across different value chains. You would have as a consumer also been a beneficiary of a track and trace system, have you done any shopping on e-commerce platforms. So, one of the common examples that we see in track and trace system is let us say you have gone online to purchase an item and once you have purchased the product, your order is going to get created and the product is going to get delivered to you in a few days time. So, this is what you are observing as a customer who has made a purchase. So, finally, what happens when this occurs when the product is finally delivered to you, the local delivery station is going to assign a delivery boy or a delivery personnel in order to send the products to your location and to your home. Now, what is the proof that this product is actually given to you? What is the proof that you receive the product? What is the proof that you are at home when you receive this product? There are so many such questions that need to be answered when you are doing online shopping because you are not in a brick-and-mortar system and there is no representative of the manufacturer or the retailer in physical form who can actually see to that that the product has been sold to you. There are also no CCTV systems which can be very easily placed in brick-and-mortar stores in order to display how the product has actually been sold to the customer and what was the nature of engagement. In the absence of all of this, if we have to prove that a purchase and delivery process has completed, then this is where track and trace systems come into place. So, one of the common things you would have observed is once you have placed the order, the product is visible to you in a virtual form in terms of its storage and movement, in terms of its locations, where it is and where it is currently at which station and is it out for dispatch or delivery. And how do you get to know all of this? You can get to know all of this when you are working on your mobile and you have logged in to the application that represents the e-commerce retailer or the e-retailer who provides this facility to you to track the product. So, what you are actually seeing is the movement of the product as it moves from one location to the other. Let us say you have ordered a product based in South India, you have ordered a product from the northeast of India. Once this order has been accepted and once the dispatch has been made, you get a notification or you get some kind of an idea on the app that this is going to be dispatched soon or it has been dispatched. And then you can see the entire chronology of events that are going to occur. Now, how is this information being provided to you is the question. This information is provided to you because at every point in time within this entire chronology, we are having some kind of product tracking that is happening and this kind of product tracking is enabled through the use of technology. Finally, when the product actually comes to you and it is somewhere nearby, you will get a notification that the product is out for dispatch or out for delivery. When this is the case, then you are aware that you have to be at home or you have to be at the location from where you have placed the order or where you have given the address for the delivery to be made and you are going to wait for the order to come to you. And when this is going to happen, once the delivery boy or the delivery agent actually comes to your place and makes the delivery to you, you would have observed that the delivery agent is also going to scan the product once they give the product to you. Now this is an indication that the final point of delivery has been reached for the product. And once you have signed off on this, let us say through a signature on the app on the digital screen that they show to you or if you share an OTP that is what we call as a one-time password which is available on your mobile phone, once you share this information then it is verified that this product has been delivered to the person who actually purchase the product or who placed the order for the product. So this kind of triangulation of information is being carried out up till the very last moment when the product is actually being delivered to the customer. So you can see how track and trace systems have become so very popular in recent times with the growth of e-commerce, with the growth of e-retail, it is very common place to have such systems. In the absence of such systems, it becomes very difficult in order to demonstrate that this particular delivery was actually being made. Now you can see the potential benefits of all of this. Let us say you have used the product and you have found the product is of not as good quality as you thought it was and you want to raise some complaints. How would you raise complaints? A complaint can be raised provided it is known that you have the product. This record would already be available because the delivery receipt has been created at the time that you picked up the product from the delivery agent. Now you have some kind of a reference point in order to talk to the e-retailer and ask them that with respect to this particular delivery which was made on so and so date at so and so time at my location, I am having certain complaints or issues with the nature of the product. And this helps you raise further complaints and helps you resolve the issue to the satisfaction of both the customer as well as that of the e-retailer. So we can see how very common place it is to now had track and trace systems and track and trace systems are a very interesting innovation which have really disrupted the way logistics is being carried out in supply chains. As customers, as consumers of final products of FMCG products, we see this on a regular basis in e-commerce, but we also see some amount of track and trace technology being used when we go to brick and mortar stores as well. You would observe that there is some kind of a scanning of the products which happens at the time of purchase and you would observe that only once this is done the receipt and the bill and all of that is going to get created and once your payment is done this information is shared with you and you can observe this in many other formats as well. So what we are going to now discuss is what is the kind of technology interface that we have in track and trace technologies and how it actually builds into the entire system of track and trace. So moving forward, when we talk about track and trace technology, it is a very popular topic nowadays considering the role of huge amount of security issues and cyber security issues that has taken place in supply chain management. Hence there is a huge amount of focus both from a research as well as practitioner perspective. So what are the major steps or the kind of events that are going to happen in any kind of track and trace systems? The first and foremost step in a track and trace system is to capture attributes of the product and also capture the relevant data associated with this. What kind of attributes could we be searching over here when it comes to a product? There are so many attributes that we could think of. One of the attributes that we can think of is what is the serial number of the product? This is a very basic information that we would be interested in knowing. What is the batch number of the product? Where was this product actually being made? What is the temperature, humidity and other climatic conditions for this product during storage? So many such attributes could be actually relevant to the organization and maybe of interest to the organization. What we need to first and foremost decide is what kind of attributes are of interest to us? When we are talking about track and trace systems, it is possible to track a lot of attributes right. So is it necessary that we track all of these attributes or do we look at only some specific attributes? This would be known basis what is the kind of application we are interested in. Suppose, we are interested in only monitoring the movement of inventory from one place to the other, then we would be interested in knowing what is the serial number of the product and what is the location of the product and at what time was this product available at a specific location. So, of all of these the most unique kind of attribute that could be specific to the product would be its serial number right because that represents that product and this is the main attribute that we want to capture. The time of this particular capture can also be representing the time at which this product is present in a certain location right. And similarly the location at which it was captured will represent the location of where the product is currently present. So, it could be at a warehouse or it could be at the retail point or it could be at the level of the manufacturer wherever the time and location is going to be present at that point in time that attribute is going to get captured along with the serial number. Now, are we interested in knowing what is the temperature pressure and weather conditions at the time of capture? So, we need to question as to what is our application case at this point? What do we need to know? Since we are interested in only knowing what is the inventory movement happening, where is the inventory located? In such track and trace systems we would not be interested in knowing what are the climatic conditions associated with storage and transport. So, the first and foremost thing that we need to really understand is what are the specific attributes of the product or of the system that we require in order to capture basis the kind of application that we are interested in. Now, once this information is getting captured the question is the question that comes to mind is how do we capture this information? Product attributes and the data related to the products and its environment can be captured through a variety of devices and tools. The first and foremost requirement is that we have some kind of labeling being carried out for the products. So, the labeling that could be carried out could be a manual label. For example, we can print out several stickers which indicate the batch code, the date as well as the quantity and these stickers can be placed on every item and manually we can print out or we can write down the serial number for each product. So, by doing so, we have created a completely manual process where we have created stickers or labels and pasted it on to the product and manually input data such as serial numbers which are also recorded against the inventory data that we have with respect to these materials. So, this is a very manual process as you can understand if this kind of a labeling is being carried out of course, we are able to label all the products and of course, we are able to create records, it is very useful however, let us look at the use of such labeling. We want to find out where the inventory is at what location and at what time right. Now, what we can find out definitely is where the product is based upon the serial number and at what point of product reach we can find out this information by recording the time at which this product was actually counted or actually evaluated right and the last one is where the product is also located we can record this information when we actually pick up this item for counting. We can do this entire process in a very manual way and as you can see over here the effort required to do this can become very very large when there are many items to be actually recorded in the inventory status for that particular location. So, if this is the case this kind of a technology all the very very low cost in terms of the kind of effort that we are doing at a per item basis, the total cost of the efforts required will be very large because the amount of time required to do this will be very high when it comes to large volumes of the items. So, in such cases we require some kind of technology intervention that can improve the way in which we record the inventory status record the data and in the way we capture this data. The second stage is once we have captured this data what do we do with this data right. So, again coming to a manual process you would have recorded this data in a pen and paper format in books or notebooks or papers and now this information again has to be fed into let us say a computer system let us say into an excel workbook where you are manually entering the data points. This is one process of carrying out the data storage and transmission and how do you actually store this data. But as you can see this can become very inefficient and not only inefficient this can also become very incorrect because of fatigue associated with capturing the data in a manual basis it is possible that we make mistakes while entering the data either into the sheets of paper or while entering data into the excel workbooks itself. So, this makes the data capture and transmission a very risky state of affairs. So, for this purpose again we require some kind of a technology intervention that can connect directly to the point of data capture and get the data directly input into some kind of an application let us say an excel workbook or some kind of a database. One of the possibilities of doing this is to have technology in terms of devices which are capturing the data from the product and which are connected to internet through which the data can be transmitted to some kind of a local storage system or to some kind of a cloud storage system either this is one possibility or we could have these devices capturing the data from the product storing it temporarily in a local storage let us say in a temporary hard drive which can then be removed and plugged into another system for data transfer. So, there is different kinds of possibilities which are there even for transmitting the data from the point of capture even when technology is being implemented in capturing the data at the point of recording the inventory status. Now, once this is done the third step would be we have got all of this data we have captured all of this data in an excel workbook or we have captured all of this data in a database or we have captured it may be in our manual sheets of paper itself. Now, we need to maintain these records as you can understand maintaining large amounts of data files in terms of paper based formats can be again a very risky business because paper can always get damaged paper can get lost and huge amount of issues could be associated with the same in a very few steps whereas, the other option that we have is have this information and data safely and securely stored in some kind of a local computer or some kind of a cloud storage system where there is a lot of security involved with how or who accesses this particular data. This kind of process is very important to ensure that the sanctity of the data captured is being maintained. So, we should not have any kind of interventions or any kind of mismanagement of this particular data capture which has happened getting reflected because of poor maintenance of the database. So, this would be the third step. Now, all of this as you can see relates to directly how the technology is being used mainly to capture the data to transmit and to store the data. But one last step which is very important and which we can find in this research paper is a very important step that I also feel is that it is not simply enough for us to capture the data through the use of technology and store this data, but we need to do something about this data as well. This is where the final step of technology intervention can actually come in which is once we have this data in place how do we store this data and how do we share this data with a variety of stakeholders. So, who would the stakeholders be? The stakeholders could be internal stakeholders who are managing the inventory perhaps a shop floor manager who requires status of the inventory on a daily basis and wants to understand if there is any kind of blockage which is happening let us say at dispatch or any kind of locations within the warehouse which are being underutilized and he wants to get a snapshot of this. So, this data which has been captured definitely has to be shared with the shop floor manager, but for an audit purpose the shop floor managers superiors will also be interested in knowing whether things are under control. So, the sharing of this data has to be provided to several other stakeholders much more senior within the hierarchy to the shop floor manager and this kind of visibility would be very important to get an idea as to what is exactly happening at the shop floor and this kind of visibility can happen for people at the shop floor, but also people who are not located at the warehouse even. So, this visibility of data is very important. Similarly, we would also be interested in sharing this data to some extent perhaps with our external stakeholders. For example, let us say I am a third party logistics player and I want to provide the logistic service to a client who wants to store their products within my facility. One of the ways I can actually work with my client is to show them what amount of space is available within my facility so that the client can take decisions as to where the product needs to be located within my facility or how much product has to be actually given to my facility given that my facility is some kind of a warehouse. So, here giving access to your client in terms of what is the kind of space available and what locations are filled with inventory and what kinds of inventory are being filled, this kind of information can actually be shared as a visualization with the client who can then take appropriate decisions in terms of engaging with the third party logistics player. So, this is a very important step where we have captured all of this information and the next decision that we need to take is how do we share and collaborate with external and internal stakeholders and also how do we make decisions basis all of this. So, in summary if we see track and trace technologies provide inventory visibility by capturing, by transmitting and storing relevant attributes of the inventory during its storage, during its movement or even during usage of the products. And these technologies because they are able to capture the snapshot, so to speak of the product at a specific location or during transit it helps us provide a state of the system or helps us visualize the state of the system at a particular point in time. So, for example, if you are interested in knowing three weeks from today, three weeks back what was the amount of inventory which was located in your warehouses, what was the type of inventory which was located in your warehouses and at what point in time were these inventory actually being dispatched to the next level within the supply chain. Let us say the product movement is from warehouse to a distribution center. If you wanted to know this, now you have information because of the technology which helps you understand that three weeks from today, three weeks back the amount of inventory which was present was close to 30 days of inventory which was there in the warehouse and you have the entire snapshot of where all the inventory was located within the warehouse and this information is also helpful in order to provide you with an understanding of how well your warehouse was utilized. Similarly, three weeks back you also know how fast the inventory was actually moving out of your warehouse to the distribution centers and if there was any kind of delays which were happening at the warehouse. So, this snapshot is very very important for us to understand the state of the system and if required take any kind of corrective action. So, let us look at some of the technologies which are used for track and trace apart from the manual systems which of course, like I mentioned is paper based systems where stickers and labels were being used earlier at upper item basis or at the packaging basis or at the packaging level. We have several technologies nowadays which are in use and which are getting adopted at a very fast rate across industries. So, one of the most popular technologies that is present even today is that of barcoding and barcodes are basically stickers or labels which have some kind of lines drawn on them and they can be one dimensional or two dimensional barcodes. In the sense you can have lines vertically as well as horizontally within the system. And these bars actually represent some kind of information and this would be some kind of static information which has been encoded on to that particular set of lines. And that information is usually not too many attributes, it could be just one or two attributes or a few attributes only for example, the batch number, the serial number that could be the attribute, what is the price of the product that could be an attribute, some of the other information that we can embed could be the date of expiry etcetera. And this is very popularly used also in air cargo handling whenever or if you have ever a travel by flight you would have seen that there are stickers and labels that are placed upon your luggage when you are going to give this luggage for check in and these stickers and labels are then scanned as the baggage moves through the various conveyor systems in order to ensure that it enters the right kind of flight and it exits the flight to the right kind of arrival airport. So, all of these aspects are actually encoded on to these stickers and enable us to move the cargo from one airport to another airport without loss of luggage. So, you can see the application is quite strong in such a case. It can also give us some other information such as patient health records which can be mapped on to this barcode in another system. What is our requirement when we look at barcoding? We require that if we are able if we want to capture the information from the barcode the barcode needs to be scanned usually this is a handheld device or a specialized barcode reader it has to be close to the barcode and the angle between the scanner as well as the barcode has to be very accurate the distance between them has to be very accurate if there is any kind of tilt which happens it is possible that the scanning does not happen accurately. Where do we see an application? As customers you would have seen this in retail when you make a purchase usually in checkout counters this kind of scanning is being done for the items in order to capture information related to the price and accordingly you are able to make the payments. It is usually placed on primary packaging it is also used on components that are needed to be used during manufacturing and they can be scanned one at a time in order to capture information related to how many components are there and being used in different processes. Another kind of technology which is used very commonly nowadays is QR codes or quick response codes. QR codes are actually an advanced version of barcodes and they can also be present on stickers and labels but we see that QR codes can also be present in digital formats. So, QR code can be present in this particular PowerPoint presentation also and you could scan this QR code. The amount of information that can be embedded onto a QR code is quite large because you can connect QR codes to let us say websites or other media such as videos, graphics, over points, one drive folders, Google drive folders like this you can actually connect this QR code to several other attributes over the internet and the QR codes can contain static or dynamic information. What do we mean by this is we can change the information associated with the QR code in real time basis and that will get reflected in the QR code when it is scanned. This is one possibility. The other possibility is something like a barcode itself where the information once has been captured onto the barcode it cannot be changed. So, in the similar way once the information has been embedded onto a QR code it cannot be changed as well in the case it is static information. How do we capture the information from a QR code? We have applications that can be present in the device which is then connected to a camera either it is a static camera that means you have to hold the camera in front of the QR code and the product is brought to the camera or the camera itself can move to the product and do the scanning. A very common application of this we see nowadays where the device moves to the product is in the case of drone technologies which have cameras embedded on them that can do the scanning. Here the amount of information that can be captured is quite large and even in terms of the amount of distortion which is possible in terms of angles and distance between the scanner as well as the QR code can be a little bit large. So, it is more flexible in terms of capturing data rather than barcodes. We see huge amount of application of QR codes nowadays they are very easy to make and we find them used in secondary packaging, pallets, cartons, tracking equipment, software applications so on and so forth. So, we will pick up on the next set of popular technologies in the next lecture after this before proceeding into understanding how the technology and process can be intertwined with each other. Thank you very much.