GOODQUESTION
Traceability is more transactional— looking at how products progress through the supply chain to manage inventory, KPIs, and costs. —Tavleen Kaur Senior Manager (Supply Chain) The Smart Cube TRACEABILITY IS YOUR ABILITY TO TRACK GOODS —from rawmaterials through final shipment—back to their origin. This includes both physical location and underlying supplier(s). Transparency is understanding your partners’ strengths and dependencies.
From the Ground Up
You cannot have transparency without traceability, but you can have traceability without transparency. Being able to see where a shipment is does not help the situation when it is not on time or has an outstanding issue that needs to be resolved. Traceability gives a false notion that since it’s being tracked it will arrive as expected, but as we all see from Amazon in our personal lives, this is indeed not true. Traceability gives us the opportunity to create transparency. It will allow us in advance to create the next action after identifying an issue of what needs to take place, meaning contacting a customer to notify them of their delay and creating a solution to fix the issue. Transparency goes further to the internal trip wire (mechanisms) that will kick in to rectify the situation. Being transparent allows for development of relationships within the supply chain to create outstanding partnerships. —Nicole Glenn Founder and CEO, Candor Expedite
—Michael Sinkovitz SVP Modal Solutions Coyote Logistics
TRANSPARENCY IS MUCH BROADER, encompassing visibility both within your organization and across your business network of suppliers, contract manufacturers, logistics service providers, and other trading partners. —Richard Howells VP, Solution Management for Digital Supply Chain, SAP TRACEABILITY IS TRACKINGWHAT HAPPENED. Transparency is seeing it while it’s happening. Whereas transparency focuses on mapping the whole supply chain, traceability looks at individual batches of purchase orders as they progress through the supply chain. The data used in traceability allows more targeted recalls, reducing scale and cost.
traceability looks at individual batches of components or purchase orders as they progress through the supply chain. Key benefits of traceability include increased visibility, improved quality control systems, and reduced risk. Advantages of transparency include brand loyalty; trust between suppliers, companies and customers; and, of course, stronger partnerships.
that help accelerate and automate their manual efforts and improve operations. —Lindsey Shellman Chief Commercial Officer, Centerboard TRACEABILITY REFERS TO PINPOINTING where each piece of material originates within your supply chain whereas transparency is offering relevant information to share with different parties. With import tariffs, you must know where components come from and share that with customs versus the public knowing the originating region of your product.
—Alexandra Bogusevici Sr. Product Manager, Cin7, DEAR Products
—Brian Belcher COO & Co-founder, Vector
AN ITEM IS TRACEABLE if somebody—not everybody—can find out details about where it came from (e.g., plant, lot, material source). The supply chain for that item is transparent if data is shared about how the participants transact. The more data and the more sharing, the more transparent. —Dustin Burke Managing Director & Partner, Boston Consulting Group SHIPPERS REQUIRE GRANULAR DETAILS regarding essential tracking updates and data information (traceability) but must also address a larger set of objectives. This is where transparency comes in, to include processes, tools, and technology
TRANSPARENCY IS THE FULL VIEW of the supply chain network status. Traceability is the view of the supply chain details, including data from sourcing to delivery, which essentially maps the journey of rawmaterials to finished goods—an especially important tool for industries with safety and quality requirements, such as food products and pharmaceuticals. —Gregory Tuthill Chief Commercial Officer SeaCube Containers TRACEABILITY RELIESON TRANSPARENCY. Transparency focuses on mapping the whole supply chain and captures high-level data;
—Nancy Korayim CEO, MetroSpeedy
Have a great answer to a good question? Be sure to participate next month. We want to know: What ’s your best reverse logistics tip? We’ll publish some answers. Tell us at editorial@inboundlogistics.com or tweet us @ILMAGAZINE #ILGOODQUESTION
February 2022 • Inbound Logistics 7
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