Webinar Recap: Infor Nexus Map and Trace Solution Helps Customers Meet Compliance Requirements

A recent Infor Nexus webinar featuring Brian Carelli, VP, Sustainability & Partnerships, and Heidi Benko, VP, Product Marketing & Strategy, addressed the hot topic of traceability in the supply chain. The new Map and Trace solution was developed to help customers meet recent compliance mandates that call for companies to provide evidence verifying the chain of custody for the manufacturing of goods.

As Carelli explained, recent global mandates have prompted the scrutiny of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies among the extended supply chain. Consumer and government watchdog groups are increasingly demanding responsible sourcing and documentation of sustainability actions. 

Mandates include:

• The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) (June 21, 2022) gives the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) the authority to prevent importation of goods into the United States that were manufactured wholly or in part with forced labor in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.  
• France’s anti-waste law, officially known as the Loi AGEC (January 1, 2023) requires every product marketed or imported in France to be accompanied by a “product sheet” which lists compulsory sustainability and circularity information of the items.   
• The German Supply Chain Due Diligences Act (January 1, 2023) requires German companies to identify, assess, prevent and remedy human rights and environmental risks, publishing an annual report on the steps they’ve taken.     
• The EU’s Digital Product Passport (DPP) will go into effect gradually, between 2026 and 2030 and will apply to a wide range of product types, including textiles, and will require data about the product’s origins, such as material composition, suppliers, sustainability, recyclability and more. 

The DPP which will require data, not a static report or copies of documents, will pose a challenge for many organizations. Infor Nexus partnered with two customers, Burton Snowboards and Decker Brands, to develop the Map and Trace solution to help companies map their supply chains and collect necessary information from suppliers, including tier two, tier three suppliers and beyond. The customers brought valuable insight to the project, making it an extremely practical and user-focused tool. 

The solution allows organizations to go beyond simply naming suppliers or responding to detentions issued by border agents. It helps support higher level of achievements on the traceability maturity model, validating the chain of custody and tracing specific high value materials from source. Ultimately, an organization can use it to trace the origin of all its products.

 

In the demo portion of the webinar, the solution’s mapping capabilities were highlighted as well as the screens for creating profiles of suppliers. With an easy to navigate interface, suppliers will find onboarding easy, simplifying documentation of the chain of custody as each tier within a supply chain can provide this information on their own. 

Complimenting the Map and Trace solution, the Infor Nexus Trading Partner Management product helps companies in their ESG and multi-tier transparency initiatives, including:

• Automate and manage supplier ESG assessments and other compliance surveys to learn more about your supply chain, including identifying any practices which may need improvement to meet your company’s ESG standards.
• Assess supplier performance and manage corrective action plans.
• Centralize supplier profiles and data so everything is in one place.
• Reuse templates and processes to reduce redundancy and lessen audit fatigue for suppliers.

The Map and Trace solution is particularly helpful in building a multi-tier network to help manage overall supply chain risk and enable traceability. Users can capture facility information, trace the specific materials in purchase orders and shipments, and capture supplier documents, including transaction certificates.  With Map and Trace as a foundation, Benko also discussed Infor Nexus’s plans to help companies empower transparency and traceability at scale, creating a digital product identifier, which will aid in compliance with the forthcoming Digital Product Passport mandate. This will simplify data capture, without manual input, and will even support lot and serialized item tracing of products and materials. Mapping and connecting a company’s multi-tier network, Nexus believes, will ultimately unlock the power of multi-tier transparency, making it possible for companies to conduct quality control checks at further tiers of suppliers, manage risks, and banks to support deep tier financing. 

Map and Trace is just one, and the newest, of Infor Nexus capabilities to support sustainability efforts of supply chain organizations. Others include: 

• Transportation carbon emissions tracking.
• Supplier ESG compliance surveys and corrective action plans.
• Capture required documents and certificates.
• Sustainable supply chain finance.

You can access the on-demand recording on the webinar here and learn more about Map and Trace here.