TRACK AND TRACE
Paperboard Provider Wraps Up Software Solution
A manufacturer of paperboard packaging partners with a technology integrator to combat counterfeiting.
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While the Stora Enso Pharma SHR package is not a part of the PackAgent solution, the two support each other. Stora Enso Pharma SHR can be a vehicle for item-level identification.
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Global packaging board provider Stora Enso (headquartered in Imatra, Finland) has just gotten into the software business. Recently making news in the pharmaceutical industry with its Pharma Small-Hands Resistant (SHR) package, Stora Enso is now offering a software solution to combat counterfeiting: PackAgent.
“The pharmaceutical industry is facing the problem of counterfeit drugs, which according to some estimates is worth US$35 billion every year, even in major markets such as the United States,” says Kirsi Viskari, manager, intelligent solutions, for Stora Enso Packaging Boards.
Using Trackway software developed by the Finnish software provider Stockway as an engine, Stora Enso developed the PackAgent application. The solution logs product codes embedded in bar codes or radio-frequency identification (RFID), communicates their location in the supply chain, and analyzes and archives that data. Such activity facilitates tracking and authentication of products at both unit and pallet levels, helping to build a product pedigree.
PackAgent can be used to build a full tracking history as the item moves in the supply chain. “Based on distributed peer-to-peer networking architecture, the system allows all users to communicate and share information in real time,” Viskari says. “The solution itself is operating over the Internet, but using several information security methods. All servers are protected with firewalls, all communication is encrypted, and all users have to be authorized with digital certificates.”
BearingPoint Inc. (McLean, VA), a technology consultancy with an RFID practice spanning several industries, including life sciences and healthcare, will work with Stora Enso in conducting the sales, delivery, and systems integration of PackAgent.
“Given FDA’s requirements for e-pedigree, this provides a straightforward approach to addressing this issue,” says Brent Proud, BearingPoint’s North American commercial services RFID solution lead. Proud says that the solution will help companies leverage bar codes and RFID to track item-level packaging.
“By supporting existing technologies and standards like bar codes, it can be easily adapted to different identification levels and infrastructures,” Viskari says.
It is Electronic Product Code compliant, he says, but “doesn’t depend on it, so the item numbering can also be based on the brand owner’s own logic.”
BearingPoint’s Proud says that implementing such tracking software allows manufacturers to look at how they collaborate with their partners in the supply chain. This implementation will affect processes that support such collaboration. “This software can be integrated into enterprise resource planning systems, manufacturing execution systems, and others. Tracking product data and making that data available have enterprise value—even for marketing, R&D, and inventory departments.”
In the meantime, companies “are going to have to be compliant with FDA’s mandate,” Proud says. “Pick your important product lines, and target those lines. Don’t forget clinical trials—you can also track clinical data.”
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