Buyers check for themselves
When talking of food and drug safety, sometimes more than technology is needed to prevent counterfeits entering the supply chain. It is also vital to arm end consumers with a tool that they can use to check the products' authenticity for themselves.
Moving toward the ePedigree trend, SAP, the world's third-largest independent software provider, has not only been preparing systems to enable enterprises to implement secure supply chains successfully, it has also been working with Nokia on research to make it possible for end-users to check if the products they purchased are replicas or genuine. "We talk about authentication along the supply chain, but how about end users like you and me who need to make sure we are buying genuine products," said Colin Lian, head of business development for the region at SAP Asia Pte Ltd. The idea behind the development is to allow end users or anybody involved with the supply chain to check the product using their mobile phone. Since a modern mobile phone will have NFC (near field communication) capability, users can simply let their phone talk to a tag attached to a product. Once read, information will be sent over the mobile network to what is called the Object Name Service (ONS) to check data and send back the result to the user via SMS. ONS is an automated networking service similar to the Domain Name Service (DNS) that points computers to sites on the World Wide Web. When an interrogator reads an RFID tag, the Electronic Product Code is passed to middleware, which in turn goes to an ONS on a local network or the Internet to find where information on the product is stored. The middleware retrieves the file, after proper authentication, and the information about the product in the file can be forwarded to a company's inventory or supply chain applications. "The development is a practical application. It can check a database and send back the information within 30 seconds, automatically," he said. The company has also helped SHNCP, Shanghai's largest slaughterhouse, to implement what is called a pig pedigree by using RFID tags in the complete business cycle from the pig farm to the abattoir until the animal reaches the market. With this, the origin of the raw pig, including feeding, quarantine, and abattoir information can all be tracked successfully.
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