Product Tracking and Traceability

The process of tracking production is arguably the most important skill that an operations manager can master. The challenge of production tracking is not a simple process. It requires the capability to enable operational execution of production plans with accurate tracking and control of work-in-process (WIP) information related to inventories, resource utilisation and conformance to specifications. Stated simply it is to have everything moving to or at the right place at the right time, a demanding task, but one that produces operational benefits. The requirement for traceability is frequently confused with this, but it is an associated function.

Production tracking is concerned with the allocation of resources (materials, ingredients, equipment and processes) to meet with the agreed business processes, technical specifications and continuous (preferably automatically) monitoring of these sequences that is required to avoid errors. Errors can occur at any time and are usually attributable to human issues (tiredness, ambiguous instructions and local ad-hoc working practises).

Production tracking works in all situations and helps to build a rigorous operational model into operations and the organisation as a whole. Production tracking requires breaking every project down into specific production tasks, identifying routes and resources, raw material locations, quality testing stages, output locations and check points (sometimes referred to as HACPP in particular industries)

This can take some effort, but the rewards are high. It has been seen that the conceptual point in an improvement programme that can relate to tracking is the need to ‘upgrade our data acquisition’, which on closer examination reveals deeper challenges and requirements.

The EmsPT solution provides a methodology that captures data and events automatically, provides a link between equipment assets and their utilisation, determines where raw material and ingredients are located and fully describes and automatically monitors a process by which products are made.

Would it help if all your production always used known equipment, processes, paths, people and the correct material so that efficiency was improved and realities made constantly clear, increasing customer satisfaction, on time delivery and the avoidance of external recalls?

Why MES Solutions help with Track and Trace