Identification and trace of items within an assembly or manufacturing process

A system for the identification and trace of an item within one or more of an assembly and a manufacturing process, the system comprising:

• a conveying means for conveying an item to be manufactured or assembled along a production line;
• a means for reading a first surface profile of the item;
• a means for reading a second surface profile of the item;
• and
• a controller comprising a database system,
• wherein the means for reading a first surface profile of the item is located at a beginning of the production line and is adapted to provide an initial surface profile of the item, and the wherein the means for reading a second surface profile of the item is located subsequent to a production step in which the surface of the item is manipulated, wherein the means for reading the first surface profile and the second surface profile are connected to the controller, and wherein the database is capable to associate the first surface profile and the second surface profile with an individual virtual ID of the item.

A computer program product for identifying and tracing of items within an assembly or manufacturing process, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therewith, the computer readable program code comprising:

• assigning an individual item identifier (“ID”) to an item during one or more of an initial assembly step and a manufacturing step;
• reading a surface of the item to determine a first surface profile of the item using a contactless process;
• associating the individual item ID with the read first surface profile;
• storing the first surface profile and the individual item ID in a database;
• reading the surface of the item using a contactless process to determine a second surface profile of the item after each manufacturing process step or assembling process step in which the surface of the item is manipulated;
• comparing the second surface profile with the first surface profile;
• and
• associating the second surface profile to the individual item ID in response to a mismatch between the first surface profile and the second surface profile.