Traceability
ProdTrac is designed to automatically record and retrieve traceability information on raw materials, intermediate (work-in-progress) and finished products. So if there’s ever a need to find out where batches of materials were used, which batches were used in a specific batch of product, or which customers a batch of product was supplied to, ProdTrac has the answers.
It manages this by automatically identifying every received batch at goods-in with a unique number, and then recording that batch identifier every time it’s used in manufacturing or sold to customers. So anywhere in the program, it’s possible to immediately retrieve all details.
In this example, we can see that batch 196 of Salt was used in the manufacture of batch 1731 of Base Pastry. But by clicking on the Salt batch 196 and choosing Trace Usage, we can immediately see everywhere else this batch of salt has been used.
This pops open a box listing all those batches containing batch 196, together with their summary details. From here, it’s also possible to forward trace the use of any of these batches by clicking on it.
For example, here we trace the use of the batch 670 of Base Pastry, and see it was used in the manufacture of batch 907 of Minced Beef Pie 500g. This happens to be a finished product and so we can see the details of any customers it was sold to.
In addition to the incidental forward tracing of any batches throughout the program, there are traceability modules dedicated to extracting and reporting details in the event recall alerts from suppliers, customers or enforcement authorities.
The Product Tracing module makes it possible to trace a product back to its origin and those of its components, and additionally to forward trace the destination of products through allocations to customers.
Selecting a product displays the historical batches for that product, together with their key information.
Select one of these batches, for example batch 722 of Beef Burgers 250g, and its details are displayed:
- The Allocations tab displays details of allocations made for the batch
- The Components tab shows a full breakdown of the components of this batch, showing the GRN/batch details of those components, and further revealing similar details of any sub-components.
To trace other instances of the use of any component GRN/batch, right click it and select Trace Usage as explained above.
The GRN/Batch Tracing module is used for tracing both purchased materials and manufactured products.
The 3 selection tabs show:
- where the batch has been used as a product component and details of where the product has been allocated to customers
- where the selected batch has been allocated directly to a customer, or
- the component batches of the selected batch
Searching
Often, when a traceability process needs to be carried out, full details of the material can’t be provided by the supplier, customer or authorities. The ProdTrac search facility is intended to use the limited information available to identify, as accurately as possible, the GRN/batch to be traced.
Searches can be carried out in either of two ways:
- Where a customer or food authority is providing information about a product that has been despatched.
- Where a supplier or food authority is providing information about a material that has been delivered.
Using the limited details that are available, ProdTrac then filters and displays all matching batch records. Any additional details would help to narrow the search further to ideally a single batch, but this powerful tool is invaluable in giving the earliest possible information to enable any product recall.