A traceability system is a set of disciplines of different nature that, coordinated with each other, allow us to track products throughout any chain of any type.

If we understand traceability as: "a set of pre-established and self-sufficient procedures that allow us to know the history, location and trajectory of a product, or batch of products throughout the supply chain, at a given time and through certain tools", a traceability system must be composed of:

First of all we will define what an item is, groupings of items and groupings of groupings:

We will then use the words: ITEM, BOX AND PALLET to define them.

The identification systems for products, merchandise, packages, etc., serve to give a license plate to each of the "items", "boxes" or "pallets" for which we want to record the traceability, which will force us to establish a system that allows us to recognize each one as unique and thus be able to build its traceability throughout the chain. For food products that come from the countryside, it will be essential to know the origin, farm, batch, variety, date and time of collection, which will be assigned at the time of receiving the product in the production area.

To identify products, whether items, boxes or pallets, it will be necessary:

Once the products have been identified, we may be interested in using the data to add information in order to build the trace of said product. We may also be interested in capturing data at a given moment in the chain, to know the information that the product has accumulated.

Thus, we will need data capture systems to:.

If we already have the products identified and we have systems to capture data, we are left with what to do with the captured data and how to manage it. Applications appear here that are capable of keeping track of products and managing their data for multiple and diverse purposes.