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traceability issue

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Viewing 12 posts - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
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  • May 6, 2006 at 11:36 am #43331

    lopez
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    In my organization, we prepare products which passes through many processes from raw material to the final product. we are basically a batch manufacturing company. One issue which we are facing is the traceability issue. for example if the product is failed in the premises of the vendor, we are not able to chalk out when it is produced (which day, which shift etc) so that we can take appropriate analysis of the root cause of the problem. any guide in this regard.
    ANA

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    May 6, 2006 at 1:35 pm #137366

    Charles H.
    ★ 20 Years ★
    Participant

    Go Lean.  Get as far away from batch manufactiring as you can.  Batch systems and inventory hide your waste, as you are finding out. The effort you put into “optimizing” a bad system will be wasted time, money and effort.   Adding to your scenario the difficulty of having to reinspect and sort product and purge your system of the bad goods – it just isn’t worth it.  And using your customer to find your bad product is a good way to go out of business.  Begin your Lean journey now and save yourself a lot of pain and heartache in the future.

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    May 6, 2006 at 8:30 pm #137369

    Almudena
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    You may want to benchmark a pharmaceutical company for product treaceability they are probably the best in class when it comes to treaceability and/or of a tier 1 automotive supplier.
    Almudena

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    May 6, 2006 at 8:32 pm #137370

    lopez
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    could someone explain what charles is telling me, i am not getting it
    ANA

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    May 7, 2006 at 3:55 pm #137374

    Tan
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Member

    Lean is the Best way to cater this problem, as mentioned before. Continous flow will not only trace your problem area but also will be useful to avoid many MUDA (wastes). Inventory, Movement, Overproduction all can be removed from the system.
    However if you need a temporary solution, perhaps a simple analysis through each proces step can give you an answer, (not a long term solution)
    Cheers
    Tan
     

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    May 8, 2006 at 12:00 pm #137386

    Jered Horn
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    ANA,
    Your process description…”we prepare products which passes through many processes from raw material to the final product”…is NOT uncommon.  Batch manufacturing is not the only way.  In Lean Manufacturing, the ultimate is to produce the final product 1 piece at a time (one piece flow), from raw materials to final product, one at a time.  That is not always practical, so your “Lean Journey” will be to do the best that you can.  There is WAY more to it than that.  And I am not a Lean expert, per se.  There are tons of books you can pick up.  Check out Productivity Press, for starters.
    And Lean is more about eliminating waste than product traceability.  It would help to know a little more about your current process in order to guide you on ways to improve traceability.  My experience is that you’re limited only by your imagination here.  It’s a lot easier when you’re “Lean”, but it’s not a requirement to begin improvement.
    If you want some immediate suggestions, give us some more details of your process.

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    May 8, 2006 at 1:49 pm #137391

    Monk
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    Ana,
    A simple system like a Kanban can be used to trace the product to the batch no. and then the batch no. have been related to the dat and the shift. If you have FIFO at the customer end as well as ypour end, only then can you implement this system.
    This system calls, for Synchronous Material Flow starting from your dispatch section till the time it reaches the work place and gets used in the process at the customer end. There are so simple techniques that can be used and there is also some level of technology involved in implementing the synchronous material flow.
    This forum is not suitable for exchanging information on this. If you want more information on this, please write to [email protected].
    Monk.

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    May 11, 2006 at 9:16 am #137520

    Pai
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    please provide clear picture to understand your difficulty as traceability is possible in most of the cases .Only after understanding the product nature and process types, we may be able to comment.

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    May 11, 2006 at 10:32 am #137522

    Randheer
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    I work in a pharma company and we are required by law to maintain the entire lineage of the drug (Traceability starting from the patient till first raw material). Usually it is done by maintaining electronic batch records in ERP systems. So, if needed, the entire lineage should be traceable in less than 10 minutes.
    This is more about pharma industry. It depends primarily on the type of industry you are in, the type of IT enablement in your company etc. Even when everythin fails, you can maintain a chronological batch register with all the process steps as columns till the customer name (to which it is eventually sold) and maintain it religiously. You can enter batch wise in and out time for all the steps in that register. An age old kanban type system but very effective. The shopkeepers and designer houses in UK used to maintain similar type registers in 19th and 20th centuries so, they were able to tell if the customer is having a repeat purchase or several other CRM outputs as it is practiced today.
    If that helps, fine. otherwise, share a little more about your information capturing system. You will get a clue there.     

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    May 11, 2006 at 6:49 pm #137549

    Renold
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    Hi ANA
    Randheer’s solution is appropriate to solve your problem. Further I can say that adoption of effective ISO-9000 will help you get to bottom of your problem.
    Using cronological order & combining it with year, month & day will give full traceability of the system.
    I hope this will solve your problem

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    May 12, 2006 at 3:33 am #137562

    R. Balakrishnan
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    I would like to know your exact problems and process controls / formats that you use.
    We use batch controls and we have good traceability from FG to RM. I can try to help you on  this.
     

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    May 12, 2006 at 11:38 am #137565

    Hemanth
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    Request your vendor to tag the parts. Another way of doing it could be color lines on the parts
    eg: Monday: White, Tuesday: blue, Wednesday: Red and so on… this would help in improving the traceability. To a greater extent. Only thing that you would have to ensure is you do not keep parts more than a week old and you should be doing fine.
    Hope this is helpful.
    Regards
    Hemanth

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