Traceability systems in the manufacturing industry: A systematic literature review

Traceability, the ability to generate knowledge about where, when, how, and of what materials a product was made, is a basic requirement in manufacturing and important to all stake-holders of a supply chain. Thus, traceability systems are needed to enable traceability in the manufacturing industry. The goal of this work is to map existing knowledge on traceability systems by understanding the technology, requirements and benefits associated with these systems. For this work, academic literature discussing traceability and traceability systems in the manufacturing industry was examined using the Systematic Literature Review process. Out of 561 analysed sources, 62 were accepted into the full review. To verify the results of the litera-ture review, a survey to Finnish industry practitioners was conducted using Elomatic Oy cus-tomer contacts. The results show that the most common traceability system benefits discussed in academic literature were increased production efficiency, ability to handle production errors, increased product and production safety, higher customer trust, more efficient recalls, and improved quality assurance. The survey results showed high support for each of these benefits, although seemingly with slightly different prioritization. The most common technologies associated with traceability systems discussed in the academic literature were RFID, blockchain, IoT, QR codes, and barcodes. Additionally, cloud services were often also discussed in literature. The survey results showed support for the use of barcodes and cloud services in enabling traceability. Other surveyed technologies were not widely used in the participants’ companies. The most common requirements associated with traceability systems discussed in the academic literature were the ability to trace and track traceable resource units and the ability to identify them, the ability to share traceability information, the ability to integrate data from different sources, and the ability of maintaining a production history. An important non-functional requirement was the compliance with necessary requirements. The survey results showed high support for each of these requirements. Further research is required to better understand the current market of traceability systems, the prevalent systems used and the economics of traceability systems in general. The literature review conducted for this work did not find enough information on these aspects, and they were not addressed in the survey