February'22

Tracing

The finished goods we consume undergo various transformations, from procuring the required raw materials to the final product. The final product is often an amalgamation of new elements or additives to derive specific product characteristics. In other cases, a batch of finished goods undergoes splitting, where multiple components from such batches are assembled or mixed to transform into entirely different products.

In a world with such possibilities, we face challenges in determining the provenance of resources, procurement of materials, quality of additives, and much more than what meets the eye. Ethical practices for production are questionable, with limited visibility to determine if the involved entities operate in a socially responsible way.

DLT Labs' DL Asset Track™ has introduced a feature called 'Tracing' that fulfills the critical need of the end customer to trace the components involved, their sources, the process, and practices followed at the constituent component level in delivering the finished goods.

Tracing ensures that relevant information is visible and shared with various stakeholders, business entities, and the end consumer, all having the same insight into the information with the same attributes; thus, bringing transparency, increasing trust, reducing disputes, and eventually positively impacting organizations' bottom line.

Example:

Let's consider the use case of transforming an "ore-to-metal" and understand how information aggregation brings traceability for end consumers.
Several steps are involved in the transformation:

1. The extraction of ore.
2. Material processing, like smelting.
3. Manufacturing, where various other components are added to create the final product.
4. Finally, shipping to traders.

'Tracing' enables the end consumer to trace the complete information from the origin of the ore to components added during processing to ethical practices followed throughout the transformation.

All these steps and the transformation can be traced through DL Asset Track™.

Salient Aspects

1. Tracing information from one business workflow to another business workflow.
2. Aggregating information between business entities and from various business workflows to a dedicated business workflow.
3. The ability of the end-users to backtrack the relevant information to understand the aggregation of instances.
4. Permission-based information sharing between business entities and enterprises.

'Tracing' involves primarily two activities:

A) Configurations

Configure tracing rule for a business entity

1. Select the business entity.
2. Go to attribute settings.
3. Select the attribute which you need to show in tracing.
4. Save the business workflow.

Configure tracing rule between business workflows

1. Select the business entity.
2. Go to trigger settings.
3. Select the attribute which will initiate the trigger between various business workflows.
4. Configure attribute mapping & trigger event.
5. Save the business workflow.

Configure aggregation rules

1. Allow aggregation for a business entity or configure a business workflow trigger node.
2. Configure a schedule or apply conditions.
3. Configure the aggregation details.
4. Select the target business workflow.
5. Save the business workflow.

B) Create, view aggregated information & backtrace to the source/origin of the asset

1. On the instance listing page, click the Aggregate button.
2. Select the business workflows on which aggregation is required, along with the instances from which data would be spooled-in.
3. Provide the information required by a specific business entity during aggregation & transformation.
4. On the instance details page, click the Tracing button
5. Select the business entity to view the shared information.
6. Backtrace previous business entities one by one from the current asset till the origin of the asset.