Consumer satisfaction with the quality of your products is clearly important, but the service you provide before and after the sale is equally important to any business, but often overlooked as benefiting the bottom line. However, providing efficient tracking and tracing of shipped products enhances customer loyalty and your company image. Obviously, satisfied customers are a company’s greatest asset.

Track/Trace solutions including software and Automatic identification technologies such as barcoding and RFID are both reliable and effective in ensuring the efficient delivery of materials and components to you and to your customers.

According to Claes Fornell, University of Michigan, Ross School of Business and The American Customer Satisfaction Index (http://www.theacsi.org/), “As long as repeat business is important, and as long as customers have a chance to go somewhere else, employees must deliver high levels of satisfaction for a company to be successful.” In other words, satisfied customers often become repeat customers and one way to ensure satisfaction is to provide complete visibility from sale to delivery.

Simply stated, an efficient logistics supply chain accurately tracks and traces the delivered materials used to create finished products and then stores the inventory until picking, packing, shipping, and delivery of sold products are completed.

Track/Trace solutions can provide numerous bits of information such as purchase order numbers, container numbers, bill of lading numbers customer information, item counts, weight, status and delivery date, freight charges, and more. In addition, track/trace solutions can be integrated with your order entry and accounting systems to ensure accurate information and inventory.

As with any solution, careful attention must be paid to the managing of the information collected and the effective transfer of information along the chain.

Each participant in the chain must come to the conclusion to invest in the automated process of trace/track accountability, as they are stakeholders in the overall process of finished product and will be accountable for their part. From raw materials to processing, from the manufacturer to the customer, track/trace systems provide visibility and support the company’s validation of their procedures and protocols.

SOME ASPECTS OF TRACK/TRACE SOLUTION WOULD INCLUDE:

• Tracking import and export elements of raw materials
• Integrating with internal and other processing systems
• Effectively tracking and tracing products both internally and externally
• Documenting product history from manufacturing to the customer
• Providing a supported chain of custody for finished goods

PRODUCT EFFICIENCIES OF TRACK/TRACE SOLUTIONS WOULD INCLUDE:

• Accurately accounting for materials received
• Accurately tracing assembled products
• Accurately managing recalls
• Accurately managing returns
• Enhancing company image and providing improved customer service
• Providing timely information to providers and customers
• Eliminating tracing calls for lost products
• Accurately tracking and tracing shipped products
• Decreasing paperwork
• Decreasing time-consuming searches for order information
• Eliminating customer questions regarding delivery dates
• Speeding up processing time
• Speeding up replenishment time

PRODUCT LOGISTIC AND WAREHOUSING SUPPORT VALUES WOULD:

• Reduce inventory management expenses
• Reduce stock levels
• Reduce manual checks
• Reduce product recall costs
• Eliminate data entry duplication
• Reduce errors
• Reduce labor costs

To improve the accuracy, efficiency, and reliability of your products, your processes, and your delivery to customers, as well as, your productivity and profitability, track/trace solutions including barcoding and RFID technologies are effective and proven technologies to help meet your needs.