Single-wafer tracking gains importance in PV production due to the increasing number of research lines and due to the expected deeper insight into the technological processes. Since pure logistic tracking is not robust enough for industrial application, a procedure for wafer identification is developed based on a standard bar code which is laser-scribed into the surface of the wafer within the active area of the solar cell and read-out with a specially developed vision system. The laser marking is shown to be robust enough to endure the various manufacturing steps and not to affect cell performance. The quality of different codes and the robustness of code detection by automatic vision inspection are investigated for the whole variety of different surfaces in solar cell manufacturing. Although the bar codes are hidden under diffuse illumination, they are clearly visible under direct illumination and can be decoded by a special image processing procedure. For cell processes with surface texturing on mono- and multi-crystalline silicon average detection rates of 97% and 94% are already achieved over the whole process sequence. As there is potential for improvement, the present work provides the basis for a robust tracking system in the near future. Keywords: tracking, laser processing, manufacturing and processing