Supply chain and logistics

The problem

Most supply chains can tell you what was shipped and what arrived. Far fewer can tell you what happened in between, and almost none can prove it to a third party afterwards.

The expensive failures live in that gap. Product diverted out of its intended market and sold at a different price. A recall that has to cover an entire production run because nobody can isolate the affected batch. A counterfeit entering at a distribution step rather than at manufacture. A dispute over custody where both parties have records and neither record is evidence.

How VCode is deployed

Codes are applied at the level the problem lives at: item, case or pallet, and often more than one at once, since a pallet code and the item codes inside it answer different questions.

• Custody events. Each handover is a scan, tied to who scanned it and where.
• Geofences per stage. A code intended for one market or one facility resolves there and reports elsewhere.
• Different answers per party. A distributor, a customs officer and a retailer can each get the response appropriate to them from the same code.
• Batch relationships. Item-level identity is what turns a recall from a production run into a list.

What happens when it is scanned

A scan asks the platform to identify that individual unit and evaluate where it is, who is handling it and whether that is expected. A legitimate handover resolves and adds a custody event with a time and a location.

Diversion is the case that pays for the deployment. A unit intended for one market is scanned somewhere it should not be. The scan still happens, and that is the point: the code resolves according to its rules, the response reflects that this is out of territory, and the attempt is recorded with its location. You find out from the system rather than from a price anomaly six months later.

Why a QR code or NFC alone is not enough

A serialised QR code does most of this adequately, and plenty of supply chains run on exactly that. If your requirement is track and trace within a closed network of trusted partners, it is a reasonable answer and cheaper than anything here.

RAIN RFID and VCode answer different questions about a pallet. RFID reads a thousand tags at once, without line of sight, and tells you which items are physically present. That is verification, and a camera code cannot do it. If you need to confirm contents, use RFID.

Recording an event against many items is a different job. A batch identity is scanned once and the event applies to everything associated with it, with no tag per item and no reader estate. For most custody steps, which are assertions that this consignment reached this point rather than audits of its contents, that is the cheaper and more practical answer. The honest distinction is that a batch update trusts the association, and RFID re-checks it.

The gap both leave is the trust boundary. An open serialised code can be copied onto counterfeit goods and will verify happily. RFID tells you a tag passed a reader you operate. Neither decides, centrally, whether this specific unit should be resolving to this party in this place, or records the attempt when it should not.

Why it reads in the field

Labels in a supply chain are not pristine. They are scuffed by handling, creased on a shrink wrap, wet, dusty, or stuck to a curved drum and scanned by someone who cannot stand square to it.

The symbology tolerates around 30 per cent damage, against roughly 1 to 10 per cent for a QR code, and reads at up to 170 degrees against about 40. In a warehouse that is the difference between a scan and a second attempt, multiplied by every handover in the chain.

What it changes commercially

• Diversion becomes visible. Scans outside the intended territory are a signal with a location attached, not an inference from pricing.
• Recalls narrow. Item-level identity turns a production-run recall into an addressable list.
• Custody disputes get evidence. Events recorded centrally rather than in each party’s own system.
• Counterfeit entry is harder mid-chain. A code that cannot be manufactured cannot be added to goods that were never yours.

Integration

Codes are minted per unit through the platform API as part of production or packing, and applied by the marking process the packaging allows. Scanning at each custody point runs through the handler’s own application using the SDK, or the VCode app where a partner has no system of their own. Scan history is the chain of custody. Often deployed alongside RFID rather than instead of it. See the developer documentation.