Tracking

Discrete tracking

The term discrete tracking addresses the tracking operation of discrete processes. Discrete tracking means that materials can not be splitted into sub-materials and that multiple material entities can not be joined to form a new aggregate material.

This means that with this concept the tracking materials only have one ancestor (parent) and one descendant (child). In discrete tracking the genealogy concept is also superfluous. Instead, the Material lot concept, which offers great advantages in terms of reporting, can be used.

Continuous tracking

The term continuous tracking addresses the tracking operation of continuous processes and batch processes. In continuous tracking material entities can be split into sub material entities and multiple material identities can be joined to form a new aggregated material entity. This means that with this concept the tracking materials may have several ancestors (parents) and several descendants (children). The genealogy is used to hold relations between ancestors and descendants. In continuous tracking, one important concept is that one logical material entity can exist in two ore more tracker process units at the same time as two separate tracking materials. This means that logical material entities can enter one TPU even if it has not exited from the previous TPU’s.

Realtime tracking

In Apis Click&Trace the term realtime tracking refers to tracking where the time of the transactions is implicit, and the time stamp of every transaction received from an underlying system or an operator can be assumed to be the Apis Click&Trace server time read off when the transaction arrives at the Apis Click&Trace server. In realtime tracking the sequence of the transactions received is strictly important, and this sequence must always be the same as the sequence of the corresponding physical process events.

Asynchronous tracking

This term refers to tracking where the time stamps of all transactions are included as transaction information. With asynchronous tracking the sequence of the received transactions is not important, since all transaction contains time information. In asynchronous tracking there is a specific terminology that is used to map the concepts known by the different equipment vendors into concepts known by the Apis Click&Trace system.