Zebra Technologies, Merck KGaA to Create Traceability Solutions

Zebra Technologies and Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, announced a new collaboration aimed at co-creating solutions to address challenges around product verification, authenticity, and trust.

Through this collaboration, M-Trust will be the first cyber-physical trust platform with a mobile computer scanning solution for addressing the growing issues of product safety, traceability and counterfeiting.

With Zebra’s portfolio and experience in mobile computing, asset visibility, and identity capture solutions and Merck KGaA’s patented authentication technologies, the collaboration is designed to create unprecedented levels of security, accuracy and trust in manufacturing value chains. This collaboration will also offer organizations high-quality data for training and testing AI models, enhancing analytics capabilities as AI solutions are operationalized.

“By combining our expertise in identification and authentication, both companies will deliver essential solutions for reliable data access across value chains. This integration builds trust in AI systems regarding data authenticity and origin,” said Thomas Endress, head of M-Trust, Merck KGaA. “Our collaboration with Zebra presents great potential for customers to enhance their operations for more accurate and compliant processes that businesses and consumers can trust.”

The first outcome of the collaboration will be a new handheld reader that works with the cutting-edge M-Trust platform, a secure cyber-physical trust solution developed by Merck KGaA. Launched in January this year, M-Trust enables organizations to ensure product quality and authenticity across their value chains by immutably linking the physical and digital worlds, creating secure digital twins.

This newly created prototype of the handheld reader device consists of a mobile scanner built on Zebra’s TC58 mobile computer and Merck KGaA’s security-pigment detector, the SEC-Reader to scan products and share data with the M-Trust platform via Wi-Fi 6E or 5G for verification.

“We are proud to work with Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany on this important initiative which gives manufacturers and their frontline workers a unique solution to intelligently automate essential verifications in their manufacturing and supply chain operations, and greater visibility of assets and inventory,” said James Poulton, SVP and GM, Enterprise Mobile Computing, Zebra Technologies. “Together, we can support customers to become industry 4.0 leaders with connected factories and supply chains.”