Shipment tracking is the software that tells a company where its shipment is right now, when it will arrive, and where each product inside it came from. A shipment passes through many hands on its way: a truck, a warehouse, a port, a ship and perhaps a second truck. Each of them keeps its own records, in its own system. Shipment tracking software gathers those records together.
Consider a paint company in Nagpur that is waiting for a container of pigment from China. The ship's position comes from the signal that it sends by radio and satellite. The port records the day the container was unloaded and the day customs released it. The truck that then carries it to Nagpur sends its location from a GPS device, or from the driver's phone. Data of this kind, sent by a vehicle about where it is and how it is driven, is called telematics. Supply chain visibility software puts all these records on one map and predicts when the container will reach the factory. A large company watches all its shipments together in a supply chain control tower, a screen that warns when a shipment is likely to be late.
The second question is where a product came from. Track and trace means keeping a record that lets anyone follow an item back to its source. Many countries require such a record for every pack of medicine, so that a fake or recalled pack can be found. Supply chain traceability software follows coffee, cocoa, rubber and other crops back to the farm. The European Union now requires importers to prove that no forest was cleared to grow them. So a bag of coffee from Kodagu that is sold in Europe will need its history.
The third question is whether the goods were kept in good condition. Vaccines, insulin, ice cream and fresh fish must stay within a set temperature range the whole way. This is the cold chain. Cold-chain monitoring uses temperature loggers and the refrigeration units on trucks, which report every few minutes, and warns people before the goods spoil.
Tracking draws its data from the other parts of logistics: road freight, ocean freight and customs and warehousing. The arrival time it predicts finally reaches you as the "arriving today" message from last-mile delivery.