January 27, 2023 Integrating Digital Olfaction for Enhanced Traceability

By leveraging digital olfaction and the blockchain, organizations can enhance critical traceability capabilities.

We all know that the current state of the supply chain is a messy one. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical concerns, climate events, labor shortages, and economic instability, schedule delays continue to rise and global container shipping rates are quadrupling. Manufacturers and business leaders have reached a tipping point and must rethink their supply chain strategies to successfully navigate these challenges. This includes enhancing their operations through technology adoption. In fact, data shows that 93 percent of senior supply-chain executives from across industries and geographies are striving to make their supply chains far more flexible, agile, and resilient.

Enhancing traceability capabilities has never been more critical. The ability to track the conditions of goods throughout the supply chain journey means stakeholders can identify any roadblocks and pivot their approach accordingly for more resilient processes. This visibility is especially important for perishable goods that can be easily spoiled or damaged by transport, too many transactions, or temperature fluctuations.

Despite widespread enthusiasm around traceability, many challenges exist for organizations when it comes to implementation, most of which are due to the lack of adequate technologies. For example, current existing technologies, such as NFC (Near Field Communication) or RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips, that can identify an item at any given time and track its position, are unable to provide complete end-to-end visibility.

Today’s traceability shortcomings

When it comes to optimizing supply chain strategies, current traceability technologies fall short in the following areas, leaving organizations at a competitive disadvantage: 

Security risks. Today’s traceability technologies leave room for the tampering, falsification or deletion of data, intentionally or unintentionally, by a third party. Therefore, even though a comparison of data from different sensors can reveal where and when a product was damaged, organizations are unable to fully rely on and verify the data that has been measured and collected throughout the supply chain process.   

Threats to perishable items. The state of a perishable food product can diminish quickly during shipment due to changing environmental factors. Current sensor technology is unable to take precise measurements and/or track the condition of a perishable asset over time, which can easily lead to entire shipments of spoiled goods. 

End-to-end visibility. Current traceability technology is able to collect data around the delivery of an item to an end user and the completion of its route but is unable to provide any detailed information about how travel conditions (planned and unplanned) impacted the final shipment. This is a critical, missing piece to understanding the full history and context of an item’s supply chain journey.

A growing need for AI-driven digital olfaction

Shortcomings along the supply chain journey are the white spaces where digital olfaction technology can make an impact. By mimicking the human sense of smell through machine learning and artificial intelligence, digital olfaction uses biosensors to collect odor data from products at any point in their supply chain travels. It is also able to detect any change in any good’s olfactory signature. Using digital olfaction, organizations can monitor the quality and “health” of any product throughout its entire supply chain process, and detect any changes that may hint at damaged or counterfeit items.

Odor data can also be integrated with other forms of data to reduce the chance of falsification. This can be accomplished by combining an olfactive signature with location data (GPS data from the device connected to the olfactory sensor), a legitimate serial number of the olfactory device, or a proper calibration track-record that can be remotely accessed using a shared database such as a time series database (TSDB). Once collected, using olfactive signature modeling the predicted signature can be produced and compared to the olfactory signature at the time and location of delivery. This side-by-side comparison of the predicted and the actual signature at delivery provides enhanced insight into the item’s origin and if it was properly transported.

Taking it even further, organizations can leverage AI-driven digital olfaction technology in the blockchain to address security challenges. When integrated with a business’s data processing system or blockchain, digital olfaction and traceability data is transmitted and stored with high security within a consensus-based stakeholder network. The nature of a blockchain itself also prevents data tampering as it secures the olfactory signature measurements taken during transfer and intake checkpoints. This helps improve the overall traceability of goods by providing more reliable measurements and data.

As we embrace supply chain challenges on a global scale as a normal course of business, leveraging additional technologies such as digital olfaction and the blockchain to enhance traceability will only become more vital. The time is now for organizations to take the necessary steps to optimize their traceability, and that begins with exploring what digital olfaction technology can do for them.

To learn more about digital olfaction and Aryballe’s solutions, visit Aryballe.com.

About the Author:
As global product manager, Fanny Turlure, Ph.D., guides the efforts of Aryballe’s devices team for development of new hardware products and improvement of existing products based on customer feedback and market needs. You can read more from Fanny on Aryballe’s blog.

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