Traceability is visibility.
Visibility into a supply chain that can look something like this:
👉 A garment is made in one factory in Vietnam, and had the print done in another down the road.
👉 The fabric came from one weaver in Bangladesh but was washed somewhere else.
👉 The zippers, buttons and thread came from Italy.
👉 The yarn to the fabric came from two 3 different spinners: two in China and one in Indonesia.
👉 The 3 different spinners got their raw material from different sources. One of the spinners got their cotton from two cotton traders, one in Japan and one in the US.
👉 Each traders have bales of cotton from multiple cotton ginners around the world, who bought raw cotton from different farmers around in their region.
Getting that kind of visibility can seem like just a mapping exercise to some, but I can promise you, it is not.
It will require a whole new way of working for most businesses, for the industry.
To completely change the way we work; the way we develop products, source materials and suppliers, and how we place orders, we do not only need technology, we also need strategy and some really good change management.
Have you started your change management journey?