The Benefits of Traceability and Quality Management in the Production Chain
Having a solution that allows us to identify and monitor the different events that occur in the production chain allows us to obtain all the information related to the product:
Nowadays, having transparency in all actions and processes in the supply and manufacturing chain has become a necessity for companies to guarantee the quality of the products produced, optimize the production process, the management of the inventory and guarantee the on-time delivery to the customer.
In this post, we will focus on traceability in the production process, which refers to the process of creating or transforming a product.
Traceability, in this area, goes beyond having records of the batches of raw material that have been used for production. Not all traceability software is the same, our MOM system allows you to have complete traceability of all the systems that affect the production process.
I Traceability Management Software
Having a solution that allows us to identify and monitor the different events that occur in the production chain allows us to obtain all the information related to the product:
- Different states that the product goes through.
- Composition/ Bill of materials.
- Machinery used.
- Lot number (of both raw materials and those produced).
- Operators who have participated in the production process.
- Duration.
- Work shifts.
- Result of the different quality controls.
- …
This list is only a small sample of all the events that are generated in the production process, which can be useful for later analysis.
The incorporation of these data can be manual or automated, or a combination of both, depending on the production line.
I Objectives of a Traceability System
Once we are able to monitor the different events that occur in our plant, the objectives of a traceability system can be different in each case:
- Identify and determine the history of a product
- Quickly identify those products that do not pass the quality control, and remove only the corresponding batch from the production chain.
- Optimization of the different processes.
- Increased productivity. Thanks to this traceability we can know the performance of the machine, execution times in the different stages or products… and act accordingly to improve the process.
- …
In each specific situation, it has to be defined in which direction the system is to be used, in order to capture those events that are really necessary and obtain the expected objectives.
In some occasions, the mistake of relating traceability only in sectors such as pharma or F&B, where the safety of the product has to be ensured, can be made. This is a mistake. Having transparency in all phases is useful in all companies as it helps to improve quality and efficiency in the production chain, providing real-time visibility of all operations that are carried out.
Having immediate availability of information allows you to quickly detect incidents and act accordingly.
For example, imagine the situation that some products are being produced with defects. Obtaining a clear answer of what has happened or what is the cause can be practically impossible if you are not having a control and traceability of the entire process. Maybe the quality control is not done at an ideal point and the defect is not detected. Or perhaps an operator was doing an incorrect procedure in a phase of production. Or the raw material consumed comes from the same supplier that has lowered the quality.
As you can see, there can be many causes depending on each situation, so it is useful to have visibility of the entire process of production and, thus, be able to act quickly and safely, such as removing those products that have a problem at the beginning of production.
I Quality Controls in Traceability
Within traceability, it is important to emphasize quality controls.
As its word indicates, quality control is the strategy that is used to ensure the compliance of standards that a product has. These standards are parameters that depend on the product and that are generally set by the company. For example, in the quality controls of packaging, some of these parameters could be tensile/compressive strength, hardness, gas transmission rate, moisture absorption (Cobb tests)…
Performing quality controls allows us to ensure that the product that is delivered to the customer is within the previously defined standards. Additionally, costs and waste are reduced, since in case of having to discard the product from production, thanks to traceability, it is possible to identify its history and discard only the corresponding batch.
Finally, comment that to have a good traceability of the entire process of production, data from different systems have to be crossed to contextualize the maximum of information and thus have a broader vision. That is why it is vitally important that the solution that is responsible for managing traceability allows integration with all types of technologies.
Our traceability software allows you to address all the points previously discussed, thus allowing you to increase the functionality of the platform in real time for supervision and control.
For more information, we encourage you to take a look at the description of our product.
