Food Traceability Software Systems

Traceability software systems are no longer optional in the food and beverage industries. With the passage of laws such as the Food Safety Modernization Act and the wide spread commercial adoption of GFSI - rapid traceability and recalls are now both a legal and a commercial requirement.

"From Any Point To Every Point" Traceability with "Instant Recall"

Recalls and traceability requests can come at anytime , from any direction and the "seed" data may be a lot number, a vendor's lot number, vendor, customer, or even a production order number.

But not all recall or traceability software is created equal. For instance, if shipped lot "L1234" is suspect, will your software not only identify the ingredients in L1234, but also the any ingredients that went into making the ingredient lots themselves ? In other words , are intermediates included as well as the intermediates ingredients? And does your software identify any other finished goods that share the same ingredient lots with the suspect lot?

The world is unpredictable, your traceability software better be certain, thorough, and fast.

A Simple Food Traceability Example

As this screen demonstrates, we can start our search from a lot number, a vendor lot number ,a production order , customer, vendor , etc. For this example we have chosen to start from a production order because it will show traceability both in the upstream outputs (finished goods) and the downstream ingredients.

After selecting the "View" button on the previous screen , the results page will display 3 grids.

The first grid (red border) is the "Ingredient" grid which lists all the items , lots, quantities , times, etc - for ingredients added to the production order.

The second grid (green border) lists all the items that were produced by /came out of the production order .

The third grid (blue border) lists ALL the "activity" for the inventory listed in the previous two grids. This activity includes material handling movements, shipments, receipts, etc. To get even more detail and an explanation of codes as used at your facility , your can click on the row you are interested in.

Lastly, at the top of this screen are the "Recall Report" and the "Internal Hold" buttons.

"Instant Recall" Traceability Report

This automatically generated recall list will contain all the needed information to contact affected customers and allow them to in-turn pull their appropriate products if indicated.

"Internal Hold" Traceability Report

It is often the case that identifying problems with a shipped lots has an impact on inventory still "in house". The Internal Hold report identifies any of the suspect lots still on premise as well as the lots that share ingredients with those suspect lots.