Tracking & tracing
Tracking and tracing is a term first used in the US to enable you to determine the physical position of goods in the chain.
It was first used by parties such as UPS and DHL in order to give their clients an insight into the location of parcels and express documents, but it is now also commonplace in the goods logistics industry.
At each processing station, the goods are identified and this information is fed back to the software. This enables you to determine the status of the consignment.
GPS is expected to be used in the future in order to be able to determine the exact geographic location of consignments.