PROVE IT OR ELSE!
A ComTechAdvisory Whitepaper
TRACEABILITY AND CTRM / COMMODITY MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
In order to fully support traceability requirements, Commodity Management or CTRM software, has to exhibit several key characteristics. These include,
/ Overall support for the supply chain for a commodity and / or products from point of origin to point of consumption. This will include a good deal of detailed functionality from logistics through inventory management, assay or chemical analysis functionality, and much more,
/ Ideally, the solution will also need to support multiple units of measure and multiple currencies with a seamless ability to move from one to another in the supply chain. An example of this might be in terms of procuring or producing volumes of a commodity but selling products on a mass balance basis. Another example might be where the calorific value of stock needs to be tracked in order to quantify the volume required to be procured and maintained,
/ It needs to have the ability to track bulk and / or packaged commodities at granular levels throughout the supply chain such as cotton bales, lots, shipments, and so on. Furthermore, it needs to be able to track, merge and split activities throughout the supply chain where different lots or quantities of a commodity are split or merged either in packaged form or bulk,
/ The solution must support user definable work-flows and track actions along the process so that transactions are auditable and activities traceable from start to finish,
/ This also requires detailed logistics tracking of items like trucks, containers, bails, packages and so on,
/ It must also be able to track green certificates, calculate and track carbon footprints and support communication with registry’ s to allow buyers to claim subsidies, incentives and defend claims made regarding the nature of commodities or goods sold.
The ability to perform these activities is a non-trivial exercise but brings a number of other benefits in that supply chains can be optimized for cost and timescales as well as traceability. The issue in providing all of this functionality is almost certainly in being able to set up the solution for different commodities and products. Many solutions on the market are designed with a specific commodity and industry segment in mind and extending functionality across commodities then requires significant modification and / or enhancement. In order to provide a viable and complete
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