Services & Solutions

Improve visibility and traceability across the supply chain

Visibility across the entire supply chain, and management of its logistics and processes, is fraught with significant challenges. Supply chains are becoming increasingly complex with many variables and moving parts in play, sizeable networks and distribution points, and multiple agents responsible for overseeing them.

Track and Trace is an invaluable solution for industries involved with pharmaceuticals or duty regulated goods, as legal requirements around traceability are increasing. However, Track and Trace can also deliver strategic benefits to any large-scale organisation dealing with the management of inventory across the supply chain.

Meeting legal requirements: The European Union and World Trade Organisation save implemented strict controls around the traceability of goods across the supply chain. Relevant organisations failing to comply risk severe penalties and impacted ability to trade, as well as bad press.

The need for improved visibility: Lack of supply chain visibility makes dealing with potential issues such as stock accuracy or managing damaged goods more time consuming and labour intensive.

The need to trace products across the supply chain: Without the ability to pinpoint exactly where a product is at any given point means organisations are unable to effectively react to product recalls or seizures by authorities.

Optimised Track and Trace initiatives enable organisations to:

• Increase visibility across the supply chain: Gain immediate access to detailed reports on the real-time movement of products within the supply chain, accessible via a single entry point. This can reduce costs, labour requirements and levels of obsolete stock.
• Improve reporting on KPIs: Access to granular levels of supply chain information presents opportunities to track AND measure business performance across a range of relevant KPIs, like the time taken from manufacturing to delivery at a specific retailer.
• Reduce inventory costs: Effectively measure stock churn with improved access to warehouse inventory data, in order to identify fast and slow-moving products and adjust output accordingly.
• Reduce the risk of fraud: Tackle the risk of counterfeit products by associating serial numbers, product master data, and distribution channel information across the product lifecycle.
• Comply with legal requirements: Comply with existing legal, financial and trade requirements by bringing together product lifecycle events from multiple sources, including disparate internal systems and third-party data, to provide a single source of actionable intelligence.
• Better management of product recalls: Using traceability of batch information and product duty control, provide the ability to minimise the cost and brand impact of product re-call situations.

Track and Trace makes use of two core SAP components, SAP's Object Event Repository (OER) and Supply Chain Event Management (SCEM). This offers the required flexibility and scalability, as well as the best integration capability with other SAP platforms. It also:

• Integrates with third-party systems and across other SAP platforms.
• Centrally manages serial number generation and allocation.
• Securely captures, retrieves, transfers and manages key product and serialised event data.

Bluefin Solutions can:

• Provide insight into understanding how Track and Trace can have significant benefits across your organisation.
• Evaluate a strategy for building a business and roadmap for the implementation of Track and Trace functionality.
• Help define and deliver key reporting requirements to address both legal requirements and business initiatives.
• Support the technical delivery of the Track and Trace solution.