What is Blue Yonder Chain of Custody?
Blue Yonder Chain of Custody provides the provenance of components, raw materials and finished goods, with a complete audit trail for serialized and lot-tracked items, on the multi-enterprise Blue Yonder Network.
Traditional systems lack the visibility needed to manage complex flows of lots, serials and blended products across many parties. Chain of Custody captures every custody transfer—from manufacturing through distribution, across brand owners, contract manufacturers, tier-2 suppliers, 3PLs, logistics service providers, freight forwarders and carriers—to deliver end-to-end traceability and data integrity on a trusted digital network.
Why It Matters: Traceability You Can Act On
Regulators, customers and brand owners increasingly expect companies to know exactly where a product came from and where it has been. In food, for example, regulations such as the U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) require detailed traceability. When a quality or safety issue arises, companies without granular traceability are forced into broad, costly recalls and slow investigations that put their reputation at risk.
How It Works
- Lot and Serial Tracking: Supports serialized, lot-based and mixed tracking, including splitting, blending and mechanical assembly, with individual histories.
- Multi-Tier, Multi-Party Visibility: Visibility is tailored by role—brand owners, suppliers, carriers, banks, ports and others—and distinguishes current and former possession, ownership and location.
- Consolidation and Deconsolidation: Tracks items through consolidation, deconsolidation and hierarchical operations across nodes and parties.
- IoT Integration and Exceptions: Integrates IoT sensor data such as location, temperature and seal integrity, and automatically detects exceptions such as lot expiry, unknown items or custody handover issues.
- Recall and Provenance Workbench: Rapidly traces back to affected lots, sub-lots or serials to initiate targeted recalls and analyze product provenance.
Key Benefits
- Targeted Recalls: Identify exactly which lots or serials are affected instead of recalling an entire category.
- Data Provenance: A complete audit trail of custody transfers supports compliance efforts and product authenticity.
- Shared Trust: Every authorized party works from the same custody record rather than reconciling separate files.
The Blue Yonder Difference
Chain of Custody runs on the Blue Yonder Network as part of the multi-enterprise Supply Chain Command Center. Because custody events are captured on the same network that trading partners use to collaborate, traceability extends across organizational boundaries instead of stopping at the edge of one company’s systems.