Impact of Track and Trace Integration on Pharmaceutical Production Systems

In today's competitive economic environment, track and trace (the capability to determine present and past locations of products through the whole supply chain) is becoming an increasingly urgent necessity and a key differentiator in many industries, enhancing pilferage reduction, counterfeit prevention and targeted recalls, and improving supply chain efficiency, synchronization, visibility, and security. The pharmaceutical industry, together with the food industry, is one of the most advanced in traceability system implementation, as it has found to be strongly affected by the counterfeiting phenomenon. In this paper, a brief overview of traceability international regulations in the pharmaceutical sector and of the impact of its implementation on production processes and logistics will be continued, in order to highlight the main drivers of its large and fast diffusion. Technologies developed will also be presented and criticalities, and the benefits of traceability system implementation will be analysed.