Traceability of Vehicle Components and Identification of their Technical Specification

“Traceability of vehicle components and identification of their technical specification” allows identification and traceability of individual parts, packages and deliveries throughout the supply chain.

The necessity for parts identification and traceability arises from the requirement to be able to identify defective parts in the field and from the human and financial need to be able to reduce any risk of damage after the point of sale.

Up to now each company has regulated parts identification and traceability individually. So far so good – but at the interface between companies it becomes more difficult. There is no clear agreement on:

• delimitation accuracy required for parts and their components,
• who stores which process/quality data relative to which references and
• which references are to be communicated to the customer and linked to the customer’s product.

Also, different coding and presentational formats increase the technical effort at the supplier side and make data capture difficult.

As from today the situation becomes much clearer:

• Standardised part identification (part as a technical product),
• Standardised methods of traceability (depending on the required delimitation accuracy – part, package, delivery),
• Standardised set of information to build a reference to the manufacturing process (not to give all Q/process data to customer but just a defined reference) to allow traceability,
• Defined responsibility for data storage and for building links between input components and output products,
• Standardised presentational format and information encoding,
• Respect of existing international norms and regulations,
• Respect of companies’ numbering systems (for part numbers and serial numbers).

The new recommendation will support these processes and provides in two sections a guideline on how to standardise the traceability processes and their technical applications at the interface between two companies.

The Odette recommendation should quickly become a standard in the automotive field. It will make the part identification and traceability processes more transparent and more reliable throughout the supply chain. The effort to implement traceability and part identification will decrease once the process in a company is defined. Printing/marking, reading and data storage of exchanged information will become more harmonised and the investment in this equipment will be lower, especially on shared resources. Respecting existing international standards and company numbering systems will increase the acceptance of the system.

Any concerns regarding the identification and traceability of your products? Do not hesitate – use this Odette recommendation for constructing links to your suppliers and customers.