Keywords: Supply chain visibility, Item-attendant ICT, AIDC, RFID, Identification, Positioning, Location, Data capture.

The tracking and tracing of products moving through extended global supply chains is becoming of critical important to many sectors of industry and commerce. Maximising business efficiency and supply chain responsiveness is a major driver for improving visibility of items moving within and between multiple organisations. Recent events, particularly security and anti-terrorism concerns, and the potential for injection of counterfeit goods are demanding that supply chains can be further secured. It is becoming increasingly necessary to provide full traceability, provenance and authentication of items moving within these supply chains. This paper reviews a number of the technologies that are considered collectively as Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) technologies and their potential application to tracking, traceability and identification within the fertiliser industry supply chains.

An in-depth technical coverage of the gamut of available technologies is outside the scope of this paper, which aims to map the technology landscape in a form accessible to the non-expert reader. A bibliography has been provided so that interested reader can explore further a number of the technologies that have been introduced.

Dr Keith A Osman, Technology Innovation Centre, Millennium Point, Curzon Street, Birmingham, West Midlands, B4 7XG, UK.

26 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables, 14 references.