What is material traceability?

Material traceability is the process of ensuring that the raw materials or components of a product have a record of origin, production, and destination or consumption to support traceback or recall analysis after receipt, production, or distribution. Material traceability is part of supply chain analytics and plays a critical role in quality, manufacturing and planning, legal and compliance, brand management, and sustainability functions, among others.

Why is material traceability important?

Material traceability enables the transparency needed for supply chain accountability to support safety, quality, compliance, and brand integrity. Accurate and efficient material or product traceability is essential in food and beverage, agriculture, consumer packaged goods, life sciences, and regulated industries, among others.

Where does material traceability data come from?

Material traceability origin and product attribute data can come from suppliers at every level of a supply chain, which meets a manufacturer's or brand owner's requirements and objectives. Critical material and product traceability data can also come from the manufacturer and its distribution and retail partners, as well as customers and consumers, for full end-to-end traceability.

What are the benefits of material traceability?

Material traceability enables faster and more accurate recalls and tracebacks when quality or safety issues arise. Manufactures and brand owners are able to meet compliance and brand integrity requirements more efficiently and demonstrate product stewardship and authenticity more accurately. The benefits of material traceability enhance the effectiveness of quality, compliance sustainability, and supply chain analytics functions.

SAP Business Network Material Traceability

Build trust through product genealogy and transparency across your value chain.

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Dashboard of SAP Business Network Material Traceability

Extend supply chain transparency for sustainability and safety

Capture complete material provenance from raw material to finished product to enhance safety, sustainability, and customer loyalty.

Whether tracing batch or serial numbers across your value chain, you can improve efficiency, enhance trust, and improve sustainability by extending supply chain transparency with the SAP Business Network Material Traceability solution.

Cloud deployment
Comprehensive, multitier product traceability
Precise recalls and alerts through the network
Sustainability metrics across the supply chain

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Key benefits

Protect your brand

Instill trust among customers and the market, support compliance, and mitigate risk by demonstrating data-driven stewardship of your product and your brand.

Streamline recalls

Automate the submission and receipt of recalls and alerts for multi-ingredient products and complex bills of materials up- and downstream in your value chain.

Measure sustainability

Drive compliance and meet environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals with an accurate measure of multitier raw material and subcomponent properties.

Key features

Multi-ingredient and multicomponent traceability

Capture product provenance and properties transparently across your multitier supply chain
Combine genealogy of batch and serialized products for more comprehensive product stewardship
Integrate smoothly with SAP and third-party sources across network trading partners

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Real-time dynamic visualization

Explore the provenance and bidirectional flow of products across companies through a dynamic visual display
Analyze batches or serialized products by extensible properties and attributes
Extend analytics and reporting through connected APIs and use the intelligence across your organization

Precision alerts through the network

Streamline safety recalls and tracebacks through in-network, bidirectional, real-time alerts
Reduce the cost and time of recalls to improve safety and brand loyalty
Demonstrate compliance efficiently and build brand loyalty deeply through transparent network collaboration with trading partners

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Frequently asked questions

: Material traceability is the process of ensuring that the raw materials or components of a product have a record of origin, production, and destination or consumption to support traceback or recall analysis after receipt, production, or distribution. Material traceability is part of supply chain analytics and plays a critical role in quality, manufacturing and planning, legal and compliance, brand management, and sustainability functions, among others.
: Material traceability enables the transparency needed for supply chain accountability to support safety, quality, compliance, and brand integrity. Accurate and efficient material or product traceability is essential in food and beverage, agriculture, consumer packaged goods, life sciences, and regulated industries, among others.
: Material traceability origin and product attribute data can come from suppliers at every level of a supply chain, which meets a manufacturer's or brand owner's requirements and objectives. Critical material and product traceability data can also come from the manufacturer and its distribution and retail partners, as well as customers and consumers, for full end-to-end traceability.
: Material traceability enables faster and more accurate recalls and tracebacks when quality or safety issues arise. Manufactures and brand owners are able to meet compliance and brand integrity requirements more efficiently and demonstrate product stewardship and authenticity more accurately. The benefits of material traceability enhance the effectiveness of quality, compliance sustainability, and supply chain analytics functions.
: SAP Business Network Material Traceability captures event and attribute data for batch or serialized products from trading partners, enabling bidirectional tracing through a graphical visualization showing the digital trail of inputs and outputs. The solution enables precise, efficient recalls and tracebacks, along with alerts, extensible attributes for sustainability or other product composition analysis, and native reporting that can be extended and integrated through APIs.