Honeywell launches track and trace platform for auto parts

Honeywell International Inc. said today it has developed a cloud-based track and trace platform that allows automotive firms to prevent counterfeit products from entering their global supply chains.

Morris Plains, N.J.-based Honeywell teamed with German automotive aftermarket provider TecAlliance GmbH to create the product, which is now in use by unidentified German automotive product suppliers, Honeywell said.

The "OneIDentity+" service platform authenticates and tracks individual components by assigning each one a unique, digital identification label that can be tracked with a mobile device at all points from manufacturing to delivery, Honeywell said.

Honeywell had previewed the product during a Feb. 16 webcast held at its partner conference in Dallas, but supplied the full details today.

The application runs on the Honeywell "Movilizer" cloud platform and provides end-to-end visibility and electronic documentation about where an item has traveled throughout the supply chain, whether it is loaded onto a truck, unloaded at a distribution center, or shipped to an end user, the firm said.

"Track and trace regulations and increasingly complex supply chain operations are driving the need for visibility all the way down to the individual component level," Taylor Smith, the president of Honeywell's Workflow Solutions business, said in a statement. "With our cloud-based authentication solution, we're providing our customers with an unparalleled degree of transparency and simplifying the process to comply with regulatory mandates."

OneIDentity+ joins a range of track and trace solutions provided by Honeywell as part of its "connected supply chain" portfolio, which the company says can be adapted for sectors including pharmaceuticals, baby food, tobacco, and volatile materials.

Intended to make product recalls easier and to prevent counterfeiting and piracy, the Honeywell track and trace products improve visibility by creating an electronic record of where each product has been, Smith said in the webcast.

Honeywell is currently developing another version of the system aimed at the European tobacco industry, which has until 2019 to comply with European Union (EU) regulations that require manufacturers to track each pack of cigarettes from the manufacturing plant where they are made to the specific vending machine or retail store where they are sold to end consumers, Smith said in the webcast.

That system will be built on a platform similar to the automotive tracing product, which uses a database of billions of records stored in the cloud to dramatically reduce the possibility of counterfeit products reaching consumers, he said.