Trace products

The IBM Food Trust Trace module enables your organization to view and take action on your supply chain data, such as products, facilities, events, and transactions. Integrated supply chain data, data that is shared by two or more organizations, is traceable by those organizations when they upload data referencing a shared product instance. This uploading and sharing of data enables IBM Food Trust Business Partners to trace the same product instance along their supply chains.

Watch the Trace video

Take 2 minutes and watch the Trace video to see how IBM Food Trust traces food supply chain products.

Traceability

With the end-to end product traceability in IBM Food Trust, you can easily find and track the path of your organization's product instances along the supply chain. By using the trace module, you can perform the following actions:
  • Identify product instances that fit your criteria, for example:
    • Products originating from a specified source (facility).
    • Products including a specified ingredient.
    • Products approaching expiration.
  • Trace products with identifiers, for example:
    • Product ID.
    • Lot number.
    • Serial number.
    • Purchase order number.
    • Pallet number.
    • Container number.

Data owners control which organizations can trace their data, by selecting a data access policy and setting the data entitlement when they upload data.

How to trace

To get started, click the grid icon (), then click Trace.

To trace a product, first find the product, then find the lot, serial, pallet, or container.

Find a product

  1. Enter one of the following:
    • Product ID. Enter an ID in one of the following formats:
      • 14-digit GS-1 Global Trade Item Number (GTIN).
      • 12-digit Universal Product Code (UPC).
      • 8-digit Universal Product Code (UPC).
      • IBM Food Trust product ID.
    • Product name.
    • Purchase order. If you do not have a purchase order (PO) number, you can search for POs by expected delivery date.
      Note: The product ID and product description in the PO can be used to search for products to trace.
  2. Select the product that you are interested in.
  3. Click Use this product.

Find a lot, pallet, or container

After you select a product, you can find a lot, serial, pallet, or container by date range or Electronic Product Code (EPC) ID.

To find a lot, pallet, serial, or container by date range:

  1. Select the date range for:
    • Any activity
    • Expiration date
    • Sell by / Best by / Use by
    • Production date
    • Packing date
    • Harvest start date
    • Harvest end date
  2. Select the start date and end date.
  3. Click Find. A list of lot numbers, pallet numbers, serial numbers, and container numbers is displayed.
  4. Select the lot number, pallet number, serial number, or container number.

To find a lot, serial, pallet, or container by EPC ID:

  1. Select the packing ID:
    • Lot #
    • Serial #
    • LPN #
    • SSCC #
  2. Enter the number.
  3. Click Find.

After you identify the lot, serial, pallet, or container, click Trace.

Trace results display

On the trace results page a product timeline and details about the journey that your product took along the supply chain are displayed. You can change the way that your trace results are displayed by selecting Supply chain view or Product view.

When you select Supply chain view, you are presented with the following information:
  • The facility types, which are displayed in the order that is predetermined by the system.
  • The facility owners are grouped under each facility type, which is displayed in chronological order that is determined by the event date and time, and include the product and facility name. By clicking a facility name, you can view more details about the product activity at that facility:
    • The types of events that occurred at that facility.
    • The date and time that each event occurred, displayed in your browser's local time. For example, if an event occurred at 10:00 Coordinated Universal Time and you view it from a time zone that is -05:00 from Coordinated Universal Time, you see 5:00 as the event time.
    • The quantity of product and the unit of measure that is involved in each event.
    • The lot number, pallet number, or serial number involved in each event.
    • The from and to locations, for events that involve shipping.
    • The documents that are associated with that facility, product, lot or serial, such as facility certifications.
    • The key-value pairs payloads that are attached to a supported product ID or facility ID.
When you select Product view, you are presented with the following information:
  • A list of the facility types included in this supply chain, including the number of organizations that are categorized as that facility type.
  • The input products that make up the final product, which are displayed in the chronological order that they are recorded along the supply chain. By hovering over a product, you can view more details about that product:
    • The product ID.
    • The facility owner (company).
    • The number of lots, pallets, or serials.
    • The lot numbers, pallet numbers, or serial numbers.