Looking for a benchmark on traceability. Any offers?

[Dawn]

Looking for a benchmark on traceability. Any offers?

[barb butrym]

how does that work? i'd like to get involved i can use several examples from different industries, through my consulting experience....lets have at it...

[Michael T]

I'm game.

How do you want to go about this?

Cheers!!

Mike

[SteelMaiden]

I'm ready to learn...what are you looking for? Do you just want to know how tightly each of us controls traceability? I really haven't done any benchmarking outside our own divisions before, so please excuse my ignorance

[Dawn]

Kool, I'm excited now. OK heres for starters....
We need to maintian traceability so if we have a problem with our customers we can track back and determine what product is nonconforming; preferably the least of the product.

Unfortunately we have many suppliers, and many different moves of product from one supplier to the next. This calls for several verifications of product when it gets back and several added on job numbers.
This has become cumbersome and time consuming and I'm looking for ways to simplify and still verify the processes.
Can you give me different ways you maintain this type of traceability through your systems?

[CarolX]

A company I worked for about 15 years ago had a great system...I will try to describe it for you...

All material was received using a "receiving ticket/inspection report". These were sequentially numbered. After material was accepted, this became the lot number. If the material was "raw material", i.e. bar stock to be used in the machine shop, the lot number became the job number. If we had multiple uses for a particular "lot", we could break it down further by adding "-" numbers to the base lot number, i.e. Material from lot #1234 would be used for job #'s 1234-1, 1234-2 and so on. After all manufacturing of the componenet was complete, or if the part was purchased complete, the parts would be sent to the stock room until pulled for an assembly job. The router for the assembly listed a bill of materials and had a space to record the lot numbers for each item pulled for the assembly job.
This gave us full traceability back to the original mill or component supplier. And, unfortunately, it paid for itself when we had to do a product recall. We new exactly which customers had the defective product.

Good Luck!

CarolX

[Dawn]

Barb,
I couldn't get on yesterday, but I can today-not sure why. Do you want to do this by email or keep trying here?

[Dawn]

We also have a great system and can track back almost anything.
The only problem is it has become very cumbersome.
We give the incoming powder a lot number. We give every order a job number. The lot number remains on the paperwork through the process with the job number. The problems come in because we use many suppliers and parts of the same job number can be still in house, some of that job number can be at one supplier; and some can be at another supplier.
So these orders come strolling in a couple days at a time; and we do separate final inspections as they come in. This means in order to retain traceability; we need to add extensions on to all these original job numbers to keep them separate.
Do you think a job number such as 12-18-01/8874/J is too long?