Trace

The IBM Food Trust Trace module enables member organizations to trace their products along their supply chains and share that data with their authorized supply chain partners. The Trace API is also available for developers to use REST API calls to trace supply chain assets.

How it works

The Trace module enables your organization to view and share supply chain data, such as products, facilities, events, and transactions. With Trace, you can see the complete history of a product, from when it was first harvested or created all the way to where it resides today. At each step along the supply chain, you can drill down into the details to gain a deeper understanding of the events that occurred. Integrated supply chain data (data that is shared by two or more organizations) is traceable when information that references the same product instance was uploaded by authorized organizations. IBM Food Trust supply chain partners are enabled to trace the same specific product instance, if access was authorized by the organization that owns the data.

For example, Trace can help you identify a product instance that originated from a specific source location (facility), includes a specific ingredient (product or item), or has an approaching expiration date.

Authorized users trace a product by finding its registered GS1 or IBM Food Trust identifier, such as Product ID, Lot Number, Purchase Order Number, or Facility ID.
Trace results can be narrowed by specifying more parameters, including date and time range, event type, or facility type.
Note: Event times are displayed in your browser's local time. For example, an event occurred at 10:00 Coordinated Universal Time. If you view the event from a time zone that is -05:00 from Coordinated Universal Time, you see 5:00 as the event time in the trace.
Each organization owns its data and maintains control over which organizations can trace its data by choosing a Data access control policy and setting a Data entitlement mode when data is uploaded to IBM Food Trust.