Track & Trace

What Blockchain does is remove the need for trust and replace it with verifiable truth. This is because something that’s written or changed on a Blockchain “distributed ledger” in one place is replicated and visible to others authorised to view the same ledger elsewhere. You can’t change one instance of the ledger without all the others changing too, in total lockstep.

UPS announced new technology to help healthcare companies better synchronize and share information for serialized pharmaceuticals in the U.S. supply chain as required by the Drug Supply Chain Security Act. The law requires implementation—over a 10-year period—of serialization, enhanced traceability, and data reporting to help secure the drug supply chain and increase consumer safety.

Is blockchain just the latest IT flavor of the month, or does it have real business uses? SAP is banking on the latter, and to illustrate this, it's beginning to offer blockchain services for internet-of-things-related manufacturing and digital supply chain applications.

Container shipping’s dire adoption of new technology this century has been laid bare in a damning report from analysts at Alphaliner. In its latest weekly report Alphaliner says the container industry has remained “highly reluctant” to embrace the use of new technology. “The shipping industry has continued to lag behind other sectors in innovation, with …

Predictions that the current crop of disruptive digital start-ups will revolutionize container shipping has been disputed by a leading liner analyst.
Alphaliner this week suggested that, despite the considerable hype and hundreds of millions of dollars raised by freight and logistics start-ups in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, evidence suggests that the container shipping industry is peculiarly resistant to being radically transformed.

Counterfeiting of medications is a major problem faced by the global pharmaceutical industry. Owing to globalization, the supply chain for medicines has become lengthier with every step offering another opportunity for counterfeiters. Thus, global track and trace requirements have become stringent putting tremendous pressure on the supply chain’s transparency. Pharmaceutical companies do believe that counterfeiting can be reduced significantly by implementing product serialization.

Anyone working in the port, harbour and terminal industries needs to understand the potential impact and implications of blockchain – in business, in respect to government interactions and along the supply chain. The technology has the potential to change the way parties operate and interact along the value chain as well as to open doors for new players. Some intermediaries might be impacted, others may be left out of the game.

At the beginning of this year, the BBC reported that fake Valium was ‘cheaper than chips’ in Scotland, with counterfeit tablets linked to the deaths of several people in the preceding months.
The news adds to other disturbing headlines over the past decade. Vials of the breast cancer drug Herceptin stolen and potentially tampered with before being reintroduced to the supply chain in Italy, fake batches of the statin Lipitor discovered in the UK, and ongoing reports of fake Viagra.
Counterfeit medicines are big business – the World Customs Organisation estimates they could generate £1 billion during 2017.

This video features RMA Return serials for shipping on the Serialized Warehouse Management System (sWMS). The (sWMS) is an end to end serialized warehousin

This video features sales order pick serial for shipping on the Serialized Warehouse Management System (sWMS). The (sWMS) is an end to end serialize

This video features serial aggregation (pack) and deaggregation (unpack) of the Serialized Warehouse Management System (sWMS). The sWMS is an end to en

This video features serial generation, commission, decommission, serial inquiry of the Serialized Warehouse Management System (sWMS). The sWMS is an end t

The project is primarily aimed at demonstrating compliance with the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), using a blockchain (transparency, immutability, shared memory etc) to track and trace prescription medicines. The project also seeks to demonstrate the ability to prevent counterfeit medicines from entering the supply chain.

We enable great businesses to build trust in their goods and supply chain. Provenance powered data helps shoppers choose your product.

Last month, Alibaba partnered with the city of Changzhou, China to launch the country’s first application of blockchain technology in the healthcare sector. And just last week, IBM Watson signed a 2-year agreement with the US FDA to explore the use of blockchain technologies to securely share patient data from sources such as medical records, clinical trials, genomic testing, and mobile devices.

At serialisation conference Nexus 17, held in Barcelona, Spain in June, Merck KGaA spokesman Andreas Pies said “We cannot rely on a singular security feature.”
Instead, the firm has incorporated proprietary technologies, including pigmented packaging and anti-counterfeiting platforms, to complement serialisation regulations.

Implementing ‘aggregation’ – the term used to describe pharmaceutical product unit-to-case hierarchy – is not mandatory in Europe, however industry delegates say there is incentive to push its adoption.

James Lowman, Association of Convenience Stores chief executive, said: “It is important that we tackle the illicit tobacco market throughout the supply chain but these regulations would place a significant cost and time burden on retailers, requiring them to register and pay for identifier codes for both their overall business and each individual store, and produce them each time they purchase tobacco.