Toronto, Ontario — A BMW-affiliated tech company has developed a piece of technology that allows automakers and suppliers to track and authenticate parts across supply chains and distribution systems through a digital fingerprinting system.
According to the CEO of Bellevue, Wash.-based Alitheon, Roei Ganzarski, the company’s technology is able to authenticate tiny surface characteristics within a part, acting as a fingerprint, and feed the data through the FeaturePrint AI system.
Once through the system, parts can be authenticated based on place and time of origin and checked for wear and tampering.
Ganzarski says the tech was developed by a team that invented mail reading machines that can convert handwritten addresses into bar codes for sorting.
In a statement, BMW’s CEO of i Ventures, Marcus Behrendt, called the technology “groundbreaking” and said it brings a “new level of trust to supply chains that does not currently exist.”
The company expects this technology to make its biggest impact in the realm of quality assurance at the assembly stage.
“Imagine four machines making the same part, and you find out that one of the machines wasn’t calibrated properly,” said Ganzarski.
“How do you know which parts came off of that machine, to recall only those cars?”
