Serialisation: The Next Frontier for Packaging Security and Traceability
Photo by Kolleen Gladden on Unsplash
Addicted as we all may be to The Crown, Ted Lasso or The Mandalorian, serialisation is much more than binge-watching TV on rainy nights. It is, in fact, the next wave – a new season, if you like – of digital printing.
Serialisation is the process of assigning a unique serial number to each product. This number is in turn linked to information about the product's origin, batch number and expiration date. The code is attached by methods including NFC, RFID, Barcode or QR code.
We will discuss three principal reasons for serialisation - counterfeiting, tracking grey market redirection and ensuring product integrity.
Counterfeiting
Amazon’s product serialisation service, called Transparency, is the company’s attempt to cut down on counterfeit products. Amazon gives the manufacturer a series of codes to put on its products, and those codes verify the source both to Amazon and to end-user customers. In the US alone, 4000 brands have signed on, creating 300 million codes. Several manufacturers integrate the Transparency code into their marketing, offering material or ingredient information as well as the date/location of manufacture.
Our own HP Indigo Digital Press has significant counterfeiting features. It offers single-pass security printing that combines security elements, substrates, design software, and inks to efficiently deliver end-to-end security. For marketers, this makes it possible to stay ahead of counterfeiters with an adaptive security shield providing multi-layer digital protection – on one press, in just one pass.
Grey market
An article in the Harvard Business Review estimated that $7 billion to $10 billion worth of products is sold every year in the United States outside manufacturers’ authorised distribution channels. This practice is most visible in electronics markets, where products can go through several stages before they reach the end consumer. These products are not counterfeit, but grey markets disrupt pricing and business relationships that have been carefully managed by the original manufacturer. However, printing codes, as we’ve discussed above, allow those manufacturers to keep track of where each specific product goes and how it gets there.
Product integrity
Serialisation has touched every industry, from the tags on cattle to bar codes on car parts. Probably the key driver, however, has been the pharmaceutical industry, tasked to provide safe, sterilised and traceable products globally. In common with many other manufactured products, components for each formulation are made in different locations, and each of those components has to be traced from their source. According to trade body RxGPS, “The traceability systems that use serialized data to verify, authenticate, track or trace products in the supply chain are what truly help to secure the supply chain”.
GS1, the global standards organisation, has indicated that the product identifier on each pharma medicine should include, at minimum, the following three data elements:
Global Trade Item Number (GTIN)
Expiration Date
Batch Number
Because they tend to be high value/low bulk items, pharmaceutical products are faced with all the challenges we’ve outlined above - grey markets, counterfeit products, untraceable components. Serialisation, therefore, is a vital element in the manufacture of medicines, both to maintain public confidence and guarantee public health.
Influencing manufacture and marketing
Serialisation can have a profound influence on manufacturing and printing, as this piece from Packaging Digest affirms:
As a manufacturer, your company has been focused on producing identical units to an exacting standard. With serialization, the focus evolves to producing that same product, identifying each item with unique data, communicating that data to supply chain partners, and then—depending on your supply-chain role—potentially accounting for that data for several years to come.
Serialisation, therefore, is moving rapidly from a nice-to-have to a must-have component of your printing process, and of course, digital printing is ideally suited for such work, with its lower quantity requirements and its ability for extreme customisation. Consider this feature not purely to ‘catch the bad guys’ but as another way to bridge the online/offline gap for your end-customers and a way to create stronger relationships based on trust and engagement.