Trace information from original raw material
Hello,
This is a long time issue that we've had that I'm hoping one of you have solved in your organization and can shed some light.
We stamp steel components. In the steel industry, it is essential to be able to trace the end product back to the steel's original "lot" information. So our finished product must have documentation that traces back to the original coil or sheet that it came in with. Everything that goes out our door must be clearly labeled with this information and we have to maintain the record keeping to be able to show which lot of steel any product that went out our door came from.
Our process is:
- receive the raw material and use Part Trace columns to record the information in Trace Profile 1, the first trace column is our "lot ID," which I'll call LOT_ID
- issue the raw material to our initial stamping work order and manually type all of the information recorded in the raw material trace columns to this part in Trace Profile 2, manually type in TRACE_ID to match the raw material's LOT_ID
- issue the material from the intermediate stamping operation to the final stamping operation, manually type all of the trace information recorded from the prior material issue to the trace data in this Inventory Transaction, the profile remains Trace Profile 2, but since nine times out of ten we don't have to keep track of this LOT_ID any more, we just have the system create a sequentially numbered TRACE_ID
This way, the work order has the original raw material's trace information in its trace columns. Obviously, it is a ton of seemingly extra work and leaves us very vulnerable to human error through mistypes.
Is there an easier way? I've pored through the trace documentation and haven't come anything.
I'm in the process of getting the company to use the DEMAND_SUPPLY_LINK table for our work order to customer order allocation. In my mind, if there was a linked route from finished product to raw material, it may be possible to pull it up. Is anyone doing this?
I'm hoping we are just missing something easy...
Thanks!
Adam
