Batch Level Traceability – What will it mean for your business?

Whether you are keeping a record of the country of origin of your products, or keeping track of your products for quality control reasons, batch level traceability is essential. So what will this mean for your business?

You must have a lot or batch number present on every batch of product at every stage of production in your factory

In order to be able to identify which product has come from which source, it’s vital that every product has a unique identifying batch or lot number at every stage in production. This number must be directly marked onto the product with a label, to ensure that at any point you can accurately identify which batch you are working with in production.

If you do not currently use batch or lot numbers to identify your products, then you will need to implement these wherever they are missing. This is often much easier than it sounds.

Once you have ensured that every batch or lot of product in your factory has a unique identifying number, then you need to make sure that this number is communicated to the next stage in production.It is not necessary to use the same lot or batch number at every stage of production. Providing you have a unique lot or batch number on every batch of product, at every stage of production, then these numbers can all be different. You do not need to maintain the same lot or batch number throughout your factory, just to ensure that there is never a product within your factory that does not have an identifiable lot or batch number. The String technology means that providing you give each product a unique lot or batch number, it can form a link right back through your production stages – even if these numbers change at every stage in production.

Many factories change the lot numbers that are recorded on products, even though these products have not changed physically in any way. This can happen when products are allocated to the next stage in production.This is not a problem – all you have to do is ensure that whenever lot numbers are changed, you record a process in String to reflect this change.