Merck, a leading science and technology company, and Zebra Technologies Corporation, a global leader in digitising and automating frontline workflows, today announced a new collaboration aimed at co-creating solutions to address challenges around product verification, authenticity, and trust.

Through this collaboration, M-Trust will be the first cyber-physical trust platform with a mobile computer scanning solution for addressing the growing issues of product safety, traceability and counterfeiting.

“By combining our expertise in identification and authentication, both companies will deliver essential solutions for reliable data access across value chains. This integration builds trust in AI systems regarding data authenticity and origin,” said Thomas Endress, Head of M-Trust at Merck. “Our collaboration with Zebra presents great potential for customers to enhance their operations for more accurate and compliant processes that businesses and consumers can trust.”

“We are proud to work with Merck on this important initiative which gives manufacturers and their frontline workers a unique solution to intelligently automate essential verifications in their manufacturing and supply chain operations, and great visibility of assets and inventory,” said James Poulton, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Mobile Computing, Zebra Technologies. “Together, we can support customers to become industry 4.0 leaders with connected factories and supply chains.”

The first outcome of the collaboration will be a new handheld reader that will enhance the cutting-edge M-Trust platform, a secure cyber-physical trust solution developed by Merck.

This newly created prototype of the handheld reader device consists of a mobile computer scanner built on Zebra’s TC58 mobile computer and Merck’s security-pigment detector, the SEC-Reader to scan products and share data with the M-Trust platform via Wi-Fi 6E or 5G for verification.