Traceability Solutions: Your First step to Smart Factory

By OEM Update Editorial November 1, 2021 6:06 pm IST

Leading industry experts shared perspectives on the imminence and necessity of traceability, security, effective acceptance of it in manufacturing, and optimism about adopting technology in the future.

Traceability helps improve in achieving supply chain transparency from product production to distribution and logistics for business transactions in a timely manner from manufacturer to end user; auto parts to automakers; food from farm to fork, defence etc. Role of manufacturers providing technology, such as RFID tags, QR codes, Bar codes, IoT based tech like GPS and Laser marking; the equipment devices like thermal printers, labels and tags sensors, assume importance in the ongoing data innovation in changing times. 

IoT-led- traceability solutions brought a major boom in sensor-based technology employing sensors monitoring manufacturing. It prevents circulation of counterfeit and inferior products and enables the protection of corporate brands and consumer rights. The traceability process with help of GPS enhances manufacturing that does away with excess production going to waste. OEM organised an engaging interactive panel discussion session on “Digitalisation in manufacturing: Enhancing your business with traceability solutions.” Which engaged industry experts Amitabh Chaturvedi, Founder Director, InnovaPoint Infotech Pvt. Ltd., Vineet Akre, Senior Vice President, RND & Production, WardWizard Innovations and Mobility Limited, Rohit Sadaphal, Aurangabad Electricals Limited, and Lalit Kumar Mishra, Heads Sales, Cognex Corporation.Pandemic open opportunities for traceability solutions and digitisation to enhance automation manufacturing. 

Will traceability requirements will evolve in future 

Amitabh said. The way I see traceability requirements happening today, it’s becoming more and more in demand and requirements. So it’s becoming more and more complex. More types of equipment are to be connected; more types of data to be pulled and a lot of processing and other things are required. But the facts is, or should I say, the point to consider here is, currently it is all happening across a plant. So, everybody is trying to do their own traceability inside their plant. 

Now once we achieve that, my opinion is that it’s going to start across multiple industries. Today what would happen is once I have achieved all my things, then when I receive the raw material, I scan it from their system, the data flow into my system, so I don’t need any more manual entry or any such thing, it’s all data on demand available at my vendor space. 

And in future, I’m actually waiting for the day when all this data starts to roll up. And we get the bottom of data and the OEMs and I’m especially talking about the automotive only once the OEMs have all this data available to them and looking forward to the day when they use this data or how they use this data to improve the product, improve the customer satisfaction, improve the quality. I think that’s this is where we are evolving is we are doing all groundwork right now, it’s going to grow over and it’s going to reach to the top and then it’s going to all come down and benefit all of us and benefit the end users, benefit the quality productivity. 

Using traceability solutions effectively and approach for production spaces 

Amitabh remarks, actually, as we know what the traceability is, we talked about the recalls and those things, but actually, it is effectively used for your quality improvements. For example, we are talking with one manufacturing company right now where they have a huge sale, and it’s for an export client. And what we are trying to do is that it’s an automated call, and they want to make sure that no operation is missed by any chance or as the product flows and there are gauges in between. And so, they want to trace every step and so, they are going to stop if there is a wrong part and the part in terms of the quality or something is missed by chance or the quality of the product in the machining shop itself, then the process. 

So, another point is – as we are going to move away from a lot of manual activities because they involve a lot of human errors or so, there will be a lot of automation happening while implementing these traceability solutions. So, it is for process improvements, quality and automation. 

Challenges and future prospects for the IoT based technologies Rohit said, while building on Amitabh’s suggestions and advice, like, when we talk about the post pandemic world, everything will change overnight for each and every industry not an idea. So, suddenly, the fourth industrial revolution, which was a must discuss in the conferences, is no more a notion now. So it was needed. So digital transformation, no longer was like something which was hyped kind of a thing like, which was the thing of Western countries, but now it is a need of each and every industry that wants to survive in tomorrow’s world. 

When we talk about the post pandemic requirements, traceability for industries, there is nothing like a one size fits all kind of solution. So it always has to be tailored and customised to reap many benefits for each customer. And every time, they are customising the thing as per the customer requirements. It’s not like they operate one single product, that’s what it is for every industry. So, in this case, we need to identify and capture the customer outlook for the industry. It’s exactly what we need to identify the value chain here. 

What value the traceability is going to create for the customer, on the triple bottom line aspect, like finance, social and the governance, environment and everything, how it is going to create a greater value for the customer. So that is the world that we are imagining for tomorrow. Another thing is like there are relevant new technologies coming in, one of them is a blockchain. So, tomorrow we are going to see a lot of blockchain implementation encrypted traceability solutions, so that nobody can do anything to the process records. 

So even after 20 years, we should be able to get exact data of the production, which did the production. So as I certainly said, there are not going to be a single product, which meets all customer requirements, it will always be a diverse, customised requirements, which the world has to meet. And, definitely we talk about industry 4.0 in traceability or digital transformation in traceability. 

Firstly, when we talk about investments in digital transformation industry 4.0, and when people talk a lot about the return on investment, it’s a perspective, that whatever we invest in the technology has to get matured by three or five years, because certainly after three or four years, our technology is changing at a rapid pace. So today, if you’re using a barcode, tomorrow, there could be something other pure code or like there could be some other technology with the help of visual inspection. 

So, when we talk about post pandemic facility solutions, first thing it has to be customised, it has to instead it has to get a lot of earlier ROI to the customer, it has to get rather than ROI. It has to generate a return value in a short period of time for the customer. And third thing is that it should provide data for the future, so that we can improve on the product, new design and delivery. 

Market expansion for GPS tracking 

According to Vineet, GPS traceability will be mostly helpful in tracking the performance of the vehicles. And, as innovation comes to our industry, the automobile industry; the data we collect helps us in improving our products, and then we have a lot of data coming up from our customers. And that is helping us to see their usage characteristics. And, charging and discharging and how they help because EV is a relatively new concept in the market now. So people don’t know how to use the vehicles properly. Sometimes we provide some data that shows how you’re using the vehicle. So I think in the EV industry, this IoT based tracking in future, will be very helpful. And it will help the EV industry and the end consumers as well as how to properly use the vehicle segment. 

Cost effective IoT innovations in future 

Lalit spoke, there are innovations happening across the value chain, both in the core industrial IoT, as well as on the sidelines. There are many tests and pilots happening, you know, many cases that I’ve actually seen, not just in traceability but even in terms of predictive maintenance, There are established organisations and there are start-ups who are coming in disrupting this space a lot really, So, there is just a lot of action happening. 

I think the key for us is to see, which such solutions or organisations bring in a more sustainable set of solutions, provide faster return of investments to customers, and are able to actually deep dive and look at the whole value chain and see if it actually makes sense for the customer and even within one industry, you would actually see different sets of cultures, different sets of processes and so on really. 

So, it has to be almost custom made for each customer, even within the same industry. So, what one could actually do is to look at creating modules, which could then be more like skeleton modules, which could then be you know, wrapped around with the custom layer. And I think Rohit did touch upon that beautifully as part of his explanation really, right. So, I am seeing innovation happening across man, machine and material. I mean, no specific solution I would like to recall, while I was at Tata communications, we created a very large sort of deployment of worker safety across, which is sort of very well suited for organisations which deploy a very large workforce. 

Vineet responded, Let’s say at very dangerous or accident prone areas, I’m talking about people who are operating boilers or cranes or are exposed to very high degrees of temperature or those kinds of things really. I thought that was a very, very innovative way to put up an IoT solution. Why, because this was helping save the lives of workers. And by the way, when I moved out, we had records that it had already saved, or reported. And, it actually became a big story. 

I think a lot of innovation can actually come through, and not every time you need to look at, packaged, innovative solution really, and I’ve seen a lot of organisations doing that. So, I hope that is something that’s going to continue. We are in very exciting times and we will see a lot of innovation happening across the manufacturing sector. 

3D printing traceability 

Responding to this, Rohit said, for 3D traceability, for 3d printing, what I can say is, unlike now, what we do in terms of laser printing on a product which is already produced, so, tomorrow, whatever products you produce through 3D printing, they will have an inbuilt capability of linked addresses and identification from time to time. That is one point. 

EVs usually don’t have much of the complex products for us, because like in case of IC engines, we had complex engines, covers and the pumping and the housings and everything, but EVs comparatively are more of a housing kind of thing, which requires new advanced material to be brought in. So now, earlier, people used to go with a single material. 

Now material science is going to play a more important role. That is why 3D printing is going to be more imperative in this case. So when even innovation comes with 3D printing for the production of large scale production of the automotive components. It will have an inbuilt capacity to put traceability into the system. Vineet mentioned the EV’s traceability through GPS. So, digital transformation is an integration of IT and OT. 

So, you have seen recent examples of scooters which are coming to market which have very good technology. Once we get the kind of data, when you talk about the improvements or the latest models, which need to be more efficient or needs to cater to the customer demands. Tomorrow’s future digital transformation, traceability will see exponentially accelerated developments with the help of GPS technologies for the help of the performance of the engines, because all electric engines will be there in the future. So we should be able to easily tap the signals and get the data back to the manufacturer. So that’s the future. Hence, traceability is going to play a very large role in this case. 

Security challenges in traceability solutions 

Amitabh stated data security is very, very important. And the good thing is there are a lot of security aspects of security protocols or various security ways are already there, being used in other systems, other software systems and cloud and other places. So, those will definitely be coming in here. But what we understand the way we have built is there are a lot of security related aspect, what one has to involve during this design and development type of the solution or the product or whatever they are doing, then, and then there will be lot of security aspects which will come into picture when you actually implement it. 

For example, when we implement our gateway, our gateway has a lot of open ports in the sense for scalability. So one very simple practical aspect is that when we install a gateway, we disable all those ports, which are not going to be used, and we start opening them slowly, slowly as and when required. So this is one simple thing. I mean, this is very simple. There are many more complicated in terms of encryption, or the network, which goes in then encrypting the data around data or how to bring the network security. So it’s not very simple, it’s multi layer, there is security at every aspect of the data, when you are fetching the data, and how you do want to explore. 

How you will make sure that if there is a sensor, it gives data only to your gateway. There are those kinds of things which have to be kept in mind when you’re designing the system. Of course, more and more technologies are evolving. Rohit talked about the blockchain, which is another very important security technology, which is coming in, it has already made some inroads in other verticals. And it’s coming in this also. So yes, there will be failures, there will be threats, and I think it’s always there. But yes, we are making good progress as a spy team. 

Potential possibilities for RFID solutions for technology in traceability 

Amitabh took up to reply stating, actually, it’s just a different way of identifying the presence of an object. So whether you scan a barcode or a QR code, you have RFID, where you find the presence automatically, and maybe not only the presence, but you get a little bit more data. So it’s just one of the ways we worked with the automotive assembly line, that’s where we were discussing using it to identify when a vehicle comes to your station. That’s when the RFID is going to read it and tell you which model it is, which is right in front of you right now. So there are many applications, it is also used for tracking the pallets around the factory. Its technology is very useful and can be applied in multiple use cases. 

Rohit provided an example of RFID implementation. We tag all of the assets in the plants with an RFID barcode. So, we need to do audits for the assets, which are available in different plants. We are finding it very difficult to trace which asset is where; it is already there in the system, but we are not able to trace it, when we tried it out we did a RFID tag and that is a wonderful example of how RFID can be brought. 

He adds, usually when RFID security breaches happen the tags go missing sometimes, because not all of the seals’ activity, but the kind of operations we do requires very different testing. So that was one of the security breaches. Another security breach was when we started with this activity we weren’t sure about how to secure it with the firewall or another place. So then, at that time, we faced a major problem. So that’s why we started looking at blockchain – digital Ledgers, which are encrypted and nobody is able to spoil this data which is coming to us. Today fortunately, we are not linking the data to automated machine operations. So with the help of traceability, we are going to operate a single machine or it is going to do a command. So at that point of time, it will be highly required that we should have a robust cybersecurity in place. Of course, as we move forward, the digital transformation of cyber security goes in parallel. So blockchain currently is now the future, which should go parallel with our digital. 

Potential for traceability solutions 

Lalit says the traceability market overall is actually growing exponentially with the industries. I think that comes to my mind with the rise in the consumption that we have seen in E-commerce. And that leads to a rise in logistics, right. And we all know how quickly we are able to trace the product as soon as we have ordered all the way it actually lands at home. There are, you know, these are industries that I think are going to be the most hungry for traceability and trackability as they expand to B Class C Class towns and all that, and that’s where I think the network availability will play a big role and so on. 

I’ve also seen and just sort of going a little bit away from the heavy manufacturing but process industries such as let’s say food or garments, again, you know, has shown tremendous growth and they will also need a lot of track-ability and traceability, you know, may not be in the direct line as we see track-ability and traceability but maybe with you know, with new technologies like blockchain that Rohit touched upon and others as well. 

So, those are some of the industries that I think will draw a lot of value, out of the traceability solutions. And this is going to cut across the entire value chain, not just the manufacturing process but you know, procurement of raw material all the way to delivery of goods, and being able to sort of even look at it, let’s say things go wrong and even look at them, you know, the call-back of products and so on. 

Traceability is an area where our customers are concerned about loss of revenue and reputation that comes with diversion and counterfeiting of their products. Machine vision technology is kind of increasingly applied to read and validate unique identifiers on products to prevent sort of counterfeiting and diversion really. 

Traceability solutions 

Whenever we receive the material tagging, the manufacturer of course, they provide some serial numbers, but then we are tagging each and every part with RFID, barcodes and we are as they are on the assembly line are being assembled, these barcodes are scanned and they are going in the ERP, we have a job configuration of all the parts which are using a particular bike like if at the end of the assembly line the entire bike data we have and we are able to trace which component from which batch from which manufacturer has gone to that bike. 

Lalit Kumar says the machine vision is exciting, I’m also thinking of doing something because even on the assembly line, the manual errors do occur, sometimes barcode scanning the colours and all that they are entered manually. If machine vision can give us that edge, and even we can track the colours and if they can be linked with the ERP and if details can go to colours and even the physical inspection if possible, or even if machine vision can help scan the barcodes and not. So machine vision possibly can help with that on the shop floor. 

Road ahead 

When it comes to traceability, what I have noticed, most of the time, it is considered as something being forced on to the factory, something which probably is not considered will not have, you know, as a value added item. If this data starts to go up and is available at the OEMs on demand, I think it’s going to bring tremendous improvements in terms of customer satisfaction product, and it’s going to be you know, coming down for all of us to say it’s a win win situation. So traceability, I think we should go for it. Another simple thought on that is if you haven’t started your industry 4.0 journey, traceability could be a very good starting point for that. So I think we should all be welcoming traceability, that’s all, concludes Amitabh. 

This technology can be effectively used for consumer products. And, with the expansion of EV segment foreseeing in the near future say, within three to five years, we need so many new and innovative tracking technologies.