What is Tracability

What if traceability is not possible?
When I started as a production engineer at Bosch in 2016, I didn’t know anything about traceability. After working as a production engineer for a while, I learned about incredible technologies and production capabilities. The area I was responsible for was the chrome plating of a few small parts, but these parts were entering the system in bulk. My department manager gave me a task to ensure the traceability of these parts that entered the system in bulk.
My manager, on the other hand, conveyed the subject to me as a presentation about Industry 4.0 and traceability. I started researching Industry 4.0 and traceability after this assignment, and I loved both subjects individually.
Industry 4.0 is the subject of another very deep and very good article, but here I will tell you about traceability systems.
On the basis of traceability, you simply mark every product you produce with a unique barcode, but this is sometimes not possible in large and mass productions. This is not possible in processes where you change the surface of your product as a result of a process.
One of the first technologies that come to mind in such cases is Fingerprint Traceability: If a certain surface of your product does not change as a result of your action, you can use Fingerprint Traceability technology. A certain area of your product is scanned with a high-resolution camera before the procedure, and the same area is scanned again after the procedure, and the relevant product is separated from other products by fingerprint.
One of the simplest and most efficient ways of traceability is to laser print a unique barcode or qrcode label on the product. It is the most preferred traceability method. The downside is to always be able to stamp the product in the same position and read this stamp. Another important problem is cycle time. In high-volume production processes, there will often not be enough time to write and read.
One of the solutions can be coordinate-based tracking of the product you produce. If you cannot stamp the product you produce, or if you change the product surface after processing, or if you do not have enough cycle time, you can follow your product on a coordinate basis.