A system that facilitates tracking and tracing products in an industrial
environment comprises a reception component that receives data indicative
of location of entities within an industrial environment, wherein the
data conforms to a hierarchically structured data model. A monitoring
component facilitates tracking and tracing the entities across process
boundaries. Tracking refers to a process of uniformly building a track of
objects that are forwarded to, processed for, applied in, or disposed of
usage. Similarly, tracing is the process of uniformly generating a sample
of traces of objects that are forwarded to, processed for, applied in, or
disposed of usage.