The rising consumer awareness of food safety and quality has considerably increased the significance of traceability in the manufacturing industry. One of the most proficient risk management tools, traceability is the ability to trace all the processes right from the procurement of the raw materials to production, consumption, and disposal. It acts as evidence for the manufacturers and consumers to cross-check the origin and overall production process.
Traceability’s growing importance is not limited to the food industry but has expanded to automobiles, electronics, and pharmaceuticals.
Why is traceability important?
If there is an issue in the product quality, it is imperative for the manufacturers to take prompt and effective steps before the product reaches the consumers or is used by them leading to hazardous impact. Not being able to tackle the problem creates a sense of distrust among the consumers and the business partners. This can gravely affect the brand’s reputation in the market and worse force it to shut down.
You can implement traceability for-
- Ensuring product quality
- Preventing recall problems
- Minimizing damage
- Improving management challenges
In manufacturing specifically, collecting and managing information regarding what you should do right in the process, right from the acceptance of the raw materials, to shipment of the product is how traceability takes place. In manufacturing, by assigning an identification number to the batches, traceability works. The information can be product details, dimensions, and inspection results which you link to these identification numbers. Thus this linking information can prove pivotal in improving production efficiency and quality. The increasing globalization and competition call for an urgent need to create a history management tool from the global perspective covering both inside and outside of the manufacturing process.
What are the crucial steps to ensure traceability?
- Evaluating your current process and software capabilities to check for any loopholes and how you can improve.
- Inventory resource management, thus scanning the products inwards and outwards.
- Implementing an ERP software that can monitor the movement of product serial numbers
What is forward and backward traceability?
To enable traceability, you have to identify the parts and products individually or by the information that is accumulated in each process.
As the words suggest, tracing forward means using the information to track the movement of the products. Tracing forward acts as an effective measure in a time of recalls, and identifying the defective products. Thus, upon detecting defects in the particular part, products containing those parts you can promptly identify and recall them.
Tracing backward, on the other hand, means tracking the records backward in the timeline. Take for instance, if there is a problem with shipping products, you can identify the lot and the products by tracing the records backward properly. Thus tracing back helps in improving the process quality, resulting in more stable and premium quality products.