From Day One, we at Blue Cromos have worked to make product authentication non-disruptive as can possibly be on fine tuned production processes and facilities. We've worked long enough with production to be aware of the risks of messing with fine tuned, optimised production flows, not to talk of the costs of standstills during installation of equipment.
Don't disturb the flow
Recently, we have beaten our own ambitions by leaps and bounds...
isAuthentic Was Designed From the very Start to be Unintrusive.
While practically all other solutions for product authentication require you to interfere with your optimised production lines to install equipment to add stuff to your product or packaging (labels, ink, transmitters or other whatsits), isAuthentic by Blue Cromos works simply with scanning.
Nothing added
But we still have needed to position scanners, computers and upload data to our cloud.
Minimal, unintrusive, but still an installation. Until...
Challenge Received
That is, until a major player in FMCG (Fast moving consumer goods) gave us a challenge: "Our production facilities in China are not permitted to install scanners and upload data to cloud solutions outside China. Can you devise an alternative?"
A challenge we couldn't resist
Challenge Adopted and Achieved
We have developed a version of isAuthentic that needs no installation whatsoever, nor any uploads from factory to cloud! Still with impressive levels of correct authentication and with even more impressively low level of false positives.(i.e. identifying genuine items as counterfeited)
Instead of scanning each individual item, we scan samples of authentic and counterfeit items and use AI to create identification rules. Rules that we later use for authentication in the field with impressive results. The FMCG company was blown away when they saw the results. Way beyond their expectations and requirements.
Authentication With AI Enables Completely New Playing Fields
This AI-version of isAuthentic is ideal for:
When you can't or don't want to install scanners in your production lines
When you aren't allowed or don't want to upload data from your factory to our cloud solution, albeit secure and reliable
When you want to speed up roll-out of product authentication across multiple production facilities, maybe across many countries or continents
When you want to authenticate great volumes of products of lesser value (typically FMCG) where 100% accuracy of authentication might not be called for or warranted
No Drawbacks? Maybe One.
Aren't there any drawbacks of this solution, you might ask?
That would be the last bullet above: You might not get 100% accurate authentication as there is no digital fingerprint to match to. How much less depends on a mix of factors: your ambition, your product and packaging, the availability of identification points, and the availability of counterfeit samples for us to process.
You might not get as impressively close to 100% as our challenging FMCG company did, but still worth a Proof Of Concept to find out.
Reach out here to talk POC!
Image by AzmanL on iStock