Working with a sense of purpose feels good, also when you do nerdy stuff.
At Blue Cromos we work with advanced technology. Computer vision, image analysis, AI, advanced cloud computing, app development, testing and similar things that may seem nerdy for many.
Of course, it's exciting to explore what is possible at the edge of technology, breaking new ground and developing entirely new services.
But it also feels rewarding to know Why we do it; for good purposes. To protect people, the environment and honest, responsible businesses. We do that in two major areas: Product Authentication and Digital Product Passports.
Easy Product Authentication to Protect People and Honest Businesses
Counterfeiting is a bigger evil than most people are aware of. Bigger both in volume and in the range of effects.
As we highlighted in a blog post last week, the OECD estimates the annual loss of sales for exposed companies to 500 billion USD, close to the turnover of Amazon (World #2) or, if you prefer, to the Gross Domestic Product of the United Arab Emirates! And that's just lost sales, not loss of brand value or the costs for society!
But the effects are much more widespread.
Production often takes place under substandard conditions, exposing workers to risks of accidents and exposure to long term effects from a dangerous and unhealthy work environment. Child- or forced labour is not uncommon. The surrounding environment often gets heavily polluted, often home to the same workers and their families. Child labour means that the education of poor children is sacrificed, entrenching poverty through generations.
What is produced is often of substandard quality, sometimes even dangerous. As long as it looks good enough to get sold, anything goes, is the standard for counterfeiters. No care for safety standards. No care for if materias or components used are made from materials that are hazardous for people or the environment. No care for if items can be repaired or safely disposed of.
And, international crime syndicates are often involved. If not in production then in "supplying" labour, in financing, "protection", smuggling or distribution.
Being aware of this background, it sure feels good to work on solutions fighting counterfeiting by making it dead easy to differentiate between copies and originals. To help the honest producers quickly identify copies, get them off the market and provide them with evidence to facilitate bringing counterfeiters to justice.
Digital Product Passports to empower consumers to make environmentally better purchasing decisions,
The digital product passport regulation (DPP), due to start implementation in the European Union from 2027, is a major initiative to drive more environmentally friendly design of products and production through transparency of the environmental impact and circularity of products.
Products will be required to be accompanied by a DPP where consumers easily can find uniform information on things like carbon footprint, environmental impact of components and materials, repairability, certificates of responsible sourcing and production, recycling or responsible disposal.
Through such information being easily accessible, consumers will be able to better take such aspects into account when making purchasing decisions. With changed consumer behaviours, producers will need to improve the environmental qualities of products.
At Blue Cromos, we've built a cloud platform to facilitate the handling and verification of DPP-data, a digital assembly line for product data, in parallell with the assembly of the physical product, throughout the entire supply chain.
Once again, it feels great making our kind of contribution to support an initiative driving a change to design and production practices to be more environmentally suitable.
Professionally and intellectually stimulating, feeling good about it at the same time.
Nice combo!
Image by Thapana Onphalai on iStock
Comments