Track & Trace
Overview
The Track & Trace reference architecture provides real-time visibility of shipment location, condition, and status across the supply chain network by ingesting events from IoT devices, carrier systems, and logistics partners into a unified visibility platform with consumer APIs.
Architecture Diagram
Component Descriptions
- Event Ingestion Layer: Normalises diverse event formats (GPS pings, EDI 214, webhook payloads) into a canonical tracking event schema.
- Visibility Platform / Event Store: Immutable, time-ordered log of all tracking events; maintains the current shipment state as a materialised view.
- Track & Trace API: RESTful API with webhook support enabling downstream consumers to query shipment status or subscribe to status-change events.
- Alerting Engine: Detects exceptions (delayed milestone, geofence breach, temperature excursion) and publishes alerts to configured channels.
Key Design Decisions
- Events are stored immutably; status corrections are applied as compensating events, not overwrites.
- The visibility platform is the single source of truth for shipment location and status; carrier portals are data sources, not the system of record.
- Consumers subscribe to events via webhooks rather than polling to reduce latency and load.