The Icare and Management Informatics institutes of the HES-SO Valais carried out the CTI FairTrace project with the company Importexa, which developed a real time information system allowing to follow a product at each step of the production and transformation, from raw material to finished product.
Distributors or brands using this system have an important competitive advantage by offering their partners, as well as their customers, reliable and controllable information, such as transparency of information, guarantee and safety of products. The information system implemented can be extended to the transfer of all types of data (e.g. data on substances used in the manufacture of the product, in order to meet the requirements of the REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and restriction of CHemicals) regulation or data relating to customs security AEO (Authorised Economic Operator), etc. The main impact of FairTrace is to put on the market “clean” products in the respect of the social and environmental ethics and to communicate this information in real time to the final consumer who wishes to verify the origin of a product and the conditions in which it was manufactured and transported.
Thanks to the CTI project, a working prototype is currently being used by Importexa S.A. to track the production of its orders in one of its Indian textile plants. In order to approach new customers, particularly in sectors other than textiles, the platform requires in-depth work to put it into production and industrialize it. The objective of this project is to obtain a marketable FairTrace application. To do this, it is necessary to prepare the production infrastructure, to reinforce the industrialization of the software, to develop a “Self-assessment and company profile” tool in order to be able to acquire new customers, and to prepare the integration of a cosmetic sector.