In addition to ensuring authenticity, traceability is important for ensuring the quality and safety of virtually every product on the market. Customers are increasingly demanding traceability and transparency — and to this end we are seeing leading companies like Target pledging transparency and traceability for all chemicals used across its operations and in its products.
And now a new ISO committee has been formed to make this task easier.
There are an overwhelming number of chain-of-custody management systems and programs — for food safety, sustainable agriculture or compliance in manufacturing — and they all have their own semantics, presentation and industry focus.
But the sheer number of such systems adds unnecessary layers of administration, thereby increasing costs and pushing smaller companies out of international markets, ISO says.
With this in mind a new ISO project committee, ISO/PC 308, Chain of custody, was established to make traceability simpler for all supply chain actors by using a uniform ISO language globally.
