Traceabilities

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A characteristic defining the ability to track and identify the origin of a product or component through its supply chain stages
2. a measure of how well the journey and changes of an item can be documented and verified
3. the quality of being able to establish a clear path or history for goods and materials from production to consumption

Etymology: "Traceabilities" is simply the plural of "traceability," so it names several kinds or instances of the quality that "traceability" describes. That quality is built from "trace," which goes back to Old French "trace" (a track or footprint), and the suffix "-ability," which turns an adjective like "traceable" into a noun for the state of being that way. The base word itself is the more striking piece of the story. "Trace" began as a physical mark, a path left on the ground, and only later came to mean following such a path and then tracking anything through records. Traceability carries that sense of following footprints forward, so an item's journey through a supply chain is read as a trail to be followed back to its origin.

Synonyms: trackability, monitorability