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Current trace and track systems with focus on the IT-based solutions are defined as the monitoring and recording of shipment movements from origin to destination. Goods are tracked in terms of geographic location and time-delays. The status and physical conditions of the goods can be traced on demand too. The following existing systems have got different methodologies, techniques and tools as:
- Global Positioning System (GPS) - using satellites from the American army to trace the position of transponder cared by the goods in real time synchronisation. The European System Galileo is compatible with GPS.
- Mobile Phone Approximated (AGPS) - using mobile towers from telecom operators for location of mobile phone unit, but it excludes areas with no reception.
- Java Mobile Cell Tracking - using Java based cell phone identification where the phone's cell-ID corresponds with the mobile tower location by each connection (driving by).
- Web-based telephone Tracking - using front-end and back-end databases integrated with the company's interface.
- Bar codes as series of vertical bars and spaces as graphical machine readable formats or other machine readable symbols - eg, for work-in-process (WIP) tracking of raw materials, processed goods in different stages and finished goods; For material requirements planning; For shipping and receiving applications for receiving docks and shipping departments; For route accounting and postal or retail applications.
- Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a technology, which uses radio tags or transponders and readers (encoders) getting information from the tags at a distance and providing this information to an information system. Together with the Electronical Product Code (EPC) system for unique identification of products worldwide this technology brings advantages compared with the barcode as the increase of the volume and quality of the translated information about a product/parcel and the possibility to read the information at a distance.
- Use of other wireless devises for connectivity and information sharing like Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), Bluetooth, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), 3G (third generation of tele standards and technology for mobile networking mobile standadards of the third generation) and Ultra wide band (UWB) tags for long reading distance 30 - 300 metres, voice and optical character recognition (OCR) for increasing the complexity of the managed information.
- A future development of the trace and tracking technologies than the current available solutions are the cooperating objects- in scope of a research study CONET[8] by the European Community, science and industry as part of the 6th Framework Programme. The study is concepted for developing of entities (sensors, controllers, actuators or cooperating objects) that communicate with each other and are able to gather and retrieve information either from other cooperating objects or from the environment.
In fact, for such systems, investments in IT infrastructure and organisational effort are necessary. There are still some problems in the handling of hazardous materials contained in the tags after their usage. The companies can benefit from the quality and actuality of the information and the decrease of error rates compared with the manual solutions.
So if there is a requirement to products of the garment manufacturer to be accordant to certain ecological, social or quality standard, these products part can be controlled and separated with track and trace from the rest production in each stage of the production process. All “Building blocks” of the garment like main fabric and accessories as sewing threads, embroidery threads, labels, buttons, elastics, etc, can be controlled if they are already included in the control system of each supplier for his delivery to the garment manufacturer.
Starting with the simple system of labelling for inventory of goods where numbers or symbols are given for documentation of their movements and quantity dependent of the capacity of the garment manufacturer all modern trace and track systems can be common in one mill. So it is important to plan exactly what kind of information is needed to be translated and controlled. Interesting is here that the information and the product are moving simultaneously.
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