Is Identification and Traceability a procedure or more of a guideline?

[Stijloor]

Hi again guys,

just want to have your opinion, is Identification and Traceability a procedure or more of a guideline?

tnx again....

Hi KidPaddy,

Let's stay away from 7.5.3, "requirement" or "guideline" for a moment.

Look at it this way. How important is it for you and your employees to answer the following questions?

• "What is this?"
• "How do you know that it's OK?"
• "How do you know that it passed inspection (or test)?"
• "When problems occur, how important is it to figure out how, when and where it entered the production stream?"

If you believe that it's important for your business and your customer, just do it, implement provisions for it, make it work. Be pragmatic, if it makes business sense, just do it.

Stijloor.

 

[CliffK]

Hi KidPaddy,

Look at it this way. How important is it for you and your employees to answer the following questions?

• "What is this?"
• "How do you know that it's OK?"
• "How do you know that it passed inspection (or test)?"
• "When problems occur, how important is it to figure out how, when and where it entered the production stream?"

If you believe that it's important for your business and your customer, just do it, implement provisions for it, make it work. Be pragmatic, if it makes business sense, just do it.

Stijloor.

Excellent and practical.

Must add a bullet:

• "Do we need a record of raw materials?" (e.g. FDA traceability requirements in the USA.)

 

[Stijloor]

Excellent and practical.

Must add a bullet:

• "Do we need a record of raw materials?" (e.g. FDA traceability requirements in the USA.)

Absolutely!

 

[Eng. Lutfi]

i know this thread has been dead for a long time, but its time to get it alive again...

i read your interesting debate about traceability, but as far as I can see; its majorly in production sector, but what about services sector?

for a statistical center, for example, where it issues statistical publications and indicators, is it necessary to establish traceability procedure?

 

[Paul Simpson]

.... but what about services sector?

for a statistical center, for example, where it issues statistical publications and indicators, is it necessary to establish traceability procedure?

The need defines the requirement for traceability - production or service. Think about the prison sector or hospitals - it would help to know who is who, wouldn't it?

 

[db]

for a statistical center, for example, where it issues statistical publications and indicators, is it necessary to establish traceability procedure?

Not knowing a lot about your service, I do have a couple of off-the-cuff questions. 1) Is is possible to contaminate data sets with data from a different project? 2) Do your clients require a trackable chain of custody of the data? 3) Does your company desire to be able to trace data from the finished product back to the raw numbers collection? If you answer yes to any of the above, then you might need some level of traceability.

Just thinking out loud here.

 

[atitheya]

The need defines the requirement for traceability - production or service. Think about the prison sector or hospitals - it would help to know who is who, wouldn't it?

Absolutely

Also, Hotels, Restaurants, Courier service, Pathology labs, Libraries, Railways, Airlines, Product service centres, and a host of others.

 

[Abranet]

Hey all. First post so be gentle please.
I've been reading here a lot but never been brave enough to post till now!!

I work in the Automotive Sector, dealing with the refurbishment of nearly new vehicles on behalf of a manufacture. Now, all these vehicles are registered and have their own unique identification marks in the form of registration plates and VIN numbers, so I have no need to apply my own identification to these vehicles. How do I cover this requirement?

As far as identifying the product status for monitoring or measuring requirements, I use the vehicle registration plate to identify the vehicle and update our IT system to reflect where the vehicle is in the process.

Please forgive if I am missing something screamingly obvious here, I have no experience of ISO, Quality Management etc and have been tasked with writing our QMS, this lack of experience or any depth of knowledge means I sometimes miss the obvious. I am getting better though

 

[Paul Simpson]

In answer to the thread title my answer is - Neither.

Hey all. First post so be gentle please.
I've been reading here a lot but never been brave enough to post till now!!

Kid gloves on, warm and fuzzy demeanour in place! Welcome!

I work in the Automotive Sector, dealing with the refurbishment of nearly new vehicles on behalf of a manufacture. Now, all these vehicles are registered and have their own unique identification marks in the form of registration plates and VIN numbers, so I have no need to apply my own identification to these vehicles. How do I cover this requirement?

In your case the identification and traceability of the product is controlled by the VIN plate / any additional marks but the big question is: What do you actually do to the vehicles?

So if, taking a topical example, you were dealing with a number of recalled cars to replace water pumps you would want to further identify those vehicles that had been:

• initially inspected / tested to see if pumps require replacing
• had the pumps replaced
• been retested to show that the new pumps are working

So for each vehicle you might want to add some further identification that each stage had been completed as part of 'your' process.

As far as identifying the product status for monitoring or measuring requirements, I use the vehicle registration plate to identify the vehicle and update our IT system to reflect where the vehicle is in the process.

This is also acceptable. So if the vehicle is identifiable from the IT system as to its status in your rework / repair process then that would do it.

Please forgive if I am missing something screamingly obvious here, I have no experience of ISO, Quality Management etc and have been tasked with writing our QMS, this lack of experience or any depth of knowledge means I sometimes miss the obvious. I am getting better though

It is always better to start off from the 'What is sensible' standpoint and, if in doubt, refer to the standard afterwards.

 

[JJ777]

My Question regarding this topic.

We are in IT and we lease our desktops and we are on a three year replacement cycle. Sometimes it is difficult to trace where these assets are because it is not linked to a single responsible person.
IMO I would like to see the asset linked to a staff member and in the case of a computer lab the responsible manager. Currently the assets are only registered against a permanent staff members name and even if contracting staff uses the workstation.
Can I from the standards point of view ask them to link these assets to contracting staff members to ease the Identification and Traceability?

Thanks