Traceability — proving what went where
Lots, serials and the digital product passport: what you can prove, how much tracking that justifies, and where the line sits.
Traceability is not a feature you switch on, it is a question you answer: if this turns out to be faulty, what can I prove and who do I have to call? How much tracking you need follows from that answer, and for most shops it is less than they fear.
Part 01
Start from what you would have to prove
2 minutes
Work backwards from the worst realistic phone call. A customer says a part failed. Three questions follow, and each needs a different depth of record.
A customer reports a bracket that cracked. It carries SN-2026-0117, so its passport shows it was made on 4 March from LOT-0042 steel, inspected, and despatched on the 11th. Because the lot is recorded, you can see the same batch went to two other customers — and, just as usefully, that everyone else got different steel. Without the lot you are recalling a year of shipments.
| The question | What answers it |
|---|---|
| "Which other customers got the same material?" | Lot tracking. Narrows a recall from everything you shipped that year to one batch. |
| "What happened to this exact unit?" | Serial tracking. Gives one unit its own history — made, inspected, shipped, repaired. |
| "Prove it, in a form we can audit." | The records behind both, kept as events at the time rather than reconstructed afterwards. |
Certification schemes will tell you what to record. The more useful question is what you would actually need in the hour after that call. Anything beyond it is handling cost you carry every day for an event that may never happen.
Part 02
Lot or serial — and why not both
2 minutes
A lot answers "which group". A serial answers "which one". Lots suit material bought and consumed in quantity — fasteners, sheet, adhesive. Serials suit units with a service life, a warranty, or a repair history.
Serialising consumables buys you nothing and costs a scan on every movement. The usual answer is lots on what you buy, serials on what you sell — and nothing at all on the parts nobody would ever trace.
Part 03
The digital product passport
3 minutes
Every serialised unit gets a passport — a public page, reached by scanning a QR code on the item, showing what it is and what has happened to it. The history is append-only: each lifecycle event is written when it happens and nothing is edited afterwards.
| Detail | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Built on the GS1 standard | The QR encodes a GS1 Digital Link, the same scheme retailers and regulators already use. It is not a Brytebuild-only format, so a customer scanning it does not need our app. |
| Answers people and machines | A phone gets a readable page. A system asking for data gets structured data back from the same address — so a customer can automate checks against it. |
| Works without a GTIN | If you have no barcode number for a product, Brytebuild issues its own passport address instead. You are not blocked waiting on GS1 membership. |
| History, not a snapshot | Made, inspected, despatched, repaired, returned — each event recorded as it happens, so the passport is the unit's life rather than its spec sheet. |
A passport QR is on a physical product that may outlive several website changes, and it cannot be re-issued once the item has shipped. The address it points at must therefore stay live — this is one setting worth confirming with whoever runs your hosting before you print at volume.
Part 04
How much tracking is enough
2 minutes
A practical rule: track at the level you would have to defend, and no finer. Three tiers cover most manufacturers.
| If you make… | Track | Because |
|---|---|---|
| General fabrication, no safety claim | Nothing beyond stock | Nobody will ever ask which batch a bracket came from. |
| Anything with a material certificate | Lots on incoming material | The certificate is per batch, so the batch is what you must be able to point at. |
| Units with a warranty or service life | Serials, with passports | You will be asked about one specific unit years after it left. |
A customer requirement, a certification audit, or a near miss you never want to repeat. Starting with full serialisation "to be safe" usually ends with people skipping scans under pressure — and a partial record is worse than an honest none, because it looks complete.