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consumer, traceability information becomes less and less. “If you’re unable to track or trace, you put your organisation under a lot of risk and potential pain if something goes wrong. The biggest impact if an organisation doesn’t have adequate traceability processes is in the event of a recall. “A lack of traceability as to where a specific batch of product being recalled is stored, or who it was sold to, can result in a massive recall of all batches of the recalled product. This not only carries a large financial cost but can also severely damage the product brand. “Food safety is another important aspect of traceability. Being unable to identify and isolate potentially harmful products can severely impact consumer safety.” Integrated equipment and processes At the heart of traceability and visibility are the familiar but widely misunderstood barcodes. These play a key role in how a product is traced, potentially down to an exact location, such as a warehouse bay or store, but the barcode alone isn’t enough. “How accurately a product can be traced comes down to three aspects,” Mr Szabo said. “There’s the ‘barcoding’ aspect and what information is encoded into the barcode. There’s the systems and hardware aspect, relating to the scanners and software capturing the data and storing it in the appropriate system. Then there’s the process of identifying the critical events and movements, and ensuring information is accurately captured at those points, which is just as important as the barcode and the scanner.” If any of those aspects aren’t designed for the level of accuracy required, the results are going to be inadequate through missing information, misread or unreadable barcodes, or movements not captured at all. The combination code is coming Despite their size, barcodes have always carried a large amount of data, and with the latest technology including QR codes, a 2D form of barcode, their potential has caught the attention of many in the commercial world. “We’re seeing more and more new barcode types out in the market,” Mr Szabo said. “The QR code is the most easily recognised, and these can be natively scanned on iPhone or Android phones using built-in cameras, which makes them very attractive to product marketing managers. “Scanning a QR code can take you to a webpage where you can find cooking instructions, assembly instructions, ingredients and all manner of different information, including validating of a product’s authenticity. “However, QR codes aren’t currently scannable at the check-out. As a result, some products end up having more than one barcode on them: one for scanning at the check-out (linear barcode), one for marketing (QR), and potentially a totally different barcode that works solely with a specific consumer app. “GS1 is working with industry, looking at reducing the number of barcodes on products while still delivering the functionality required – for example, point of sale scanning, marketing material, nutritional information, etc. We’ll see a day when one barcode will have multiple uses, both in logistics and supply chain, and for the consumer.” Moving forward It’s clear that supply chain adjustments to build in flexibility will need to be supported by technology giving visibility and traceability. To find out more, GS1 Australia can be contacted for advice on implementing the barcode technology required. Details are available at gs1au.org. GS1 Australia is a not-for-profit organisation. SUPPLY CHAIN & LOGISTICS CASE STUDY Cold Xpress is a Melbourne based cold and refrigerated delivery company that began in 1998 with a 12m refrigerated container. Today it operates from 26,000sqm premises with a fleet of more than 100 trucks going out to metro and country Victoria every day. Retail World asked founder and Managing Director John Di Losa about the importance of traceability to the business. “We’ve installed a transport management system and a warehouse management system, and they’re both linked up to our conveyor, which at 80 chutes is the largest and the longest in Victoria,” he said. “We bring bulk loads of cold and frozen products into the warehouse from our customers and then we use those products to make up smaller mixed loads for delivery to thousands of their customers every day. “We have an automated picking system, and whether it’s 1D, 2D or QR, we can read any barcode. “A lot of customers are linking into our system so we can create a label with their own barcode, and they don’t have to do anything. Other larger organisations that prefer using their own systems simply add CX in front of their barcode, and our scanners can then recognise it.” Mr Di Losa says there may be seven, eight or even 10 barcodes on one box. Some may reference the actual box, some may be a product code, some may be a store’s barcode, and there may be different labels on there, too. “When that box goes through a scanning conveyor belt, the scanner needs to know which one of those barcodes it has to read,” he said. “Otherwise, we’d have no way of knowing what’s in the box or where it’s going. “By adding our unique identifier, which is CX, in front of the customer’s own unique barcode, and also adding the box number and number of boxes at the end, we can accurately identify every box, in every load, all the way through the supply chain journey to the drop-off point. “Our customers trust us to maintain the cold chain. That means us making sure that the customer’s product is kept at the same temperature as we received it. We have full traceability on how we handle products from the second we pick it up, bring it back to our warehouse and deliver it. Everything is always being monitored. “We couldn’t do that without having barcodes that ID everything and data loggers that monitor temperature conditions.” JUN, 2021 RETAIL WORLD 65