Track & Trace

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Track & Trace is the process of recording the past and present whereabouts of a shipment, as it passes through different handlers on its way to its destination, through a distribution network.

Examples of start points might include an individual posting a letter or parcel, or a manufacturer making and dispatching a product.

Typical applications for Track & Trace are to identify where a product was "diverted" from its intended course (parallel importing), or where a fake product was introduced.

For postal items, it is the informal name for the international S10 standard for tracking and tracing parcels via 13-character reference numbers. The term can also more generally refer to any system for tracking shipments, such as the 18-digit Serial Shipping Container Code.