Manufacturers who track and trace the history for every step of their production process from raw material to finished products can reach a great competitive advantage in the industry. They always have to keep track entire life cycle of any process of receiving, value adding, transporting, producing or shipping.

The term, traceability is the capability to track, trace and view something with verifying the history, location or operation. Every manufacturer must have its own traceability system; so, how to establish a good traceability system? For manufacturers, each process should depend on work orders. Because, when you look at any work order at any time, you should be able to see all related previous and next processes from receiving to shipping. Have a glance at the below image that shows the importance of the work order being the main/core process of the others.

All of the above processes and items must be predefined and detailed first. For example, defining a product is not just giving a code number; it also has to have defined operations, certain process times, specific semi-finished part numbers, default inventory locations, etc. Even so, at least seven certain different components must be defined in a traceability system. All these processes are somehow related to the work order. This is the reason why work order is core and in the center of the others. We can list the actions of traceability components in chronological order that can be change depends on the manufacturer.

  1. Define the supplier and the raw material
  2. Define the customer and get a customer order
  3. Define the product and its operations
  4. Open a purchase order for the raw material
  5. Receive the raw material
  6. Open a work order for the production
  7. Ship it to the customer

Are Tags and Labels Required?

For a traceability system to work properly on the customer side, every shipment should go with a related/connected number that points to an exact process so the customer must be able to see that unique number (it can be a work order number, customer’s own order number or your unique shipping id, etc.). For any future problems with the product you sent, the customer will be able to contact you with that unique number which allows you to reach all related processes of the product. The tagging and labeling system is also required in the manufacturing plant for the same reason.

Our cloud ERP software Prodrun lets you to monitor and connect all these processes in real-time. Every component you see there is interconnected even it includes the shipping process after production. In Prodrun; customer order, purchase order, goods receiving, production and shipping processes are related to each other via the importance of work order. You can see an example page of our traceability system from the video below.

Now we need to hear about your questions and requests about traceability. Please feel free to contact us for any further information.

Prodrun provides manufacturing industry managers and leaders an understanding of how to turn business data into a revenue-producing action and helps improve their traceability and decision-making process with the simplest cloud ERP, exclusively designed for manufacturing.