Digital Traceability Through Production Value Chain

The value of Digital Traceability technologies are critical for the production systems, due to the high levels of complicated manufacturing processes and logistics operations. In this chapter, digital traceability technologies are discussed to analyze manufacturing processes, such as: tracking work-in-progress, tracking inventories, counting stock, receiving, picking, and shipping of semi finished products. To do this, an architectural framework of the technologies in production industry was designed. A roadmap for digital traceability design, configuration and deployment is presented in order to design an integrated approach as pointed out in the literature and in former projects. It can be clearly pointed out that, by using digital traceability technologies in production value chain, redundant inventory and production costs, redundant labour costs caused by inefficient production activities, inaccuracies of records, incorrect order deliveries and penalty costs incurred by customers could be significantly reduced, which provides invaluable advantages in the real life competition of the productions systems.