Worldwide Product Serialization Compliance Landscape
The increasing rate of fake and counterfeit products in the marketplace is posing a serious threat to not only consumer’s health and safety but also the brand’s credibility and profitability. To avoid incurring a trail of losses, organizations are now resorting to the latest technological advancements. To make the worldwide supply chain more transparent, the concept of product serialization is now making its appearance worldwide.
Be it incorrectly labeled food products, inaccurate grey marks on the products, defected or replicas of clothes or accessories from big brands, or fake medicines, counterfeiting is expanding its boundaries to every sector of business.
What is the Product Serialization Landscape Worldwide?
Serialization has become a prominent topic of discussion among professionals in the manufacturing and supply chain industry. Around the world, the compliance around serialization is different and every country has its own defined set of rules or regulations. However, no two countries seem to have the same set of regulations resulting in confusion and increased stress. On the other hand, fake food products, adulterated food products, falsification of brands, is giving place to counterfeiting in the food industry. Hence, it becomes even more important to ensure no consumer health is compromised and a similar set of rules is followed across the world by the manufacturers. Also, setting up similar instructions on an international level is becoming a necessity.
The worldwide product serialization landscape is an overview of various rules and regulations defined by different companies located worldwide enforcing common laws about serialization, production, and aggregation of the products around the world.
Benefits of Worldwide Product Serialization
Better Communication
The introduction of a similar set of rules shall reduce communication gaps and help in enforcing a parallel marketplace around the globe. To abide by the international standards, regular meetings and discussions are required to solve common problems through mutual suggestions. Better communication will lead to better product standards and better profitability of the industry.
Process Improvement
Product serialization shall help the organizations internally too. With product serialization the cycle time reduces, product quality improves, the production rate fastens up, and supply chain management is improvised. Such enhancements help in attaining stronger consumer trust and earning higher profits.
Enhanced Supply Chain Planning
The product serialization concept works on creating and storing all the data related to manufactured products on a cloud device accessible by one and all to create transparency in the supply chain. Printers connected to the cloud via the Internet of Things (IoT) ensures convenient assigning of a unique identification number to every single product. Thus, facilitating a clearer view of the inventory, and consequently making supply chain planning easy and better.
Easier Achievement of Milestones
Through product serialization, a unique identification number is placed on every product introduced or being sold in the market. Through the unique code, it becomes easier to track the product movement across the supply chain and allows easy detection of counterfeit goods. Moreover, it facilitates improved consumer security along with enhanced brand loyalty.
Similar Costs
Implying a similar set of rules in the industries will help in regulating the costs of the product by limiting the costs at a similar level. Thus, the products will be available on similar rates around the world that will directly help in targeting the potential marketplace. With the introduction of a similar concept of product serialization on a global level with a defined set of rules applicable to almost every industry around the world, the manufacturing and supply chain process is expected to enhance. Additionally, the consumer can get assurance regarding the quality, cost, and safety of the food, medicines, clothes or accessories they are purchasing and shall incorporate a ‘value for money’ feel amongst them.
