Seven Basic Quality tools documents
Definition of Quality Management -- it is a method for ensuring that all the activities necessary to design, develop and implement a product or service are effective and efficient with respect to the system and its performance. It is also a principle set by the company to endure the continuous advocacy of quality services and products, or the further improvement of it.
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Product Traceability Mini-Tutorial
By Quinn Garner
Original
text on www.freequality.org
Product Traceability is the ability of a manufacturer
to trace a product through its processing procedures and to also have the
ability to re-trace a product back to the manufacturer. In most cases, product traceability is
monitored by the use if a part or lot number.
Product traceability systems are commonly implemented by a company’s
Quality Control department and give that department the visibility to the products. The QC department can use these systems to
provide customers with processing data for the compliance to set procedures and
policies. These systems can be used when
a product is being recalled or has manufacturing problems. The ability to view
manufacturing process data allows them to pull in other suspected recall lots
and also assign responsibility to the defective product. In this paper the product traceability
procedure will be based on a lot. A lot
is a quantity of material with similar properties. A lot number or name is assigned to a lot at
the beginning of its processing life or when a product has been purchased from
a vendor and is entered into the system.
In most cases this is not done manually, but instead is done by a lot
traceability system that assigns a lot number when an item is received or from
a purchase order. In some cases the lot
number will be directly linked to the purchase order for the ability to track
the lot back to the original order. Lot
numbers can also be specific to the customer or vendor. Once the lots are assigned a lot number they
are processed as required by the manufacturing specifics and tracked by the lot
number that was assigned to it.
Product Traceability systems are being used to help
improve the overall quality in the manufacturing process as businesses use
Statistical Process Control programs to include measurement data or processing
data. By doing this they can monitor
their processes and evaluate different variables on a product. Whenever a quality defect is found, the lot
traceability function allows the manufacturer to review the data and determine
the cause of the defect. Some examples
of the data that would be available are who processed it, who inspected it,
what tools were used, what were the processing parameters, machine set ups, and
when the lot was ran. The purpose of
this is to be able to track down problems or defects and prevent them from
happening in the future. Product
traceability systems are being used in all types of businesses from the
computer industry to the meat packing industry.
These systems allow businesses to maintain better inventory accounting,
inventory control, and product quality.
An
example of product traceability can be found in the following example of the
meat packing industry. Product traceability
is used to track a lot or in this example an individual carcasses and all of
its processed products individually. This program gives the processing company
the ability to know the production location, exact time of production, and
information about any finished good items. Given the identification of the
carcass, then all the details about those carcasses can be retrieved, including
the farm property that supplied each carcass.
Here is an example of how it works.
·
Processed products
are identified by a production number, production date and
production location. Each item of
inventory is traceable by:
·
Production Date,
Time, Location
·
Processing
specifications
·
Health Inspection
Certificate
·
QA Code,
Temperature of the carcass
·
Production Date,
Kill Date, Location
·
Expiration date
·
Production order
and purchasing information
·
Carcasses are
tagged with barcode labels that have the above information and the details to
process the products/carcass.
·
The barcode labels
allow them to trace the meat products or items to their final destination.
As you can see from the example the meat industry needs
to maintain a large amount of data in order to keep their products safe for the
consumers. Product traceability allows
them to maintain that data and to provide it to their customers as needed as
well as deal with recall and mis-processing issues. This is just one example of how this tool can
be used. Each business is going to have
a distinct set of circumstances and requirements for their traceability system
and will more than likely need to modify and existing system to fit their
needs.
In summary Product traceability systems provide a
company the ability to store and retrieve the events that took place during
processing and the ability to monitor and change those processes. By assigning a lot number/label to their
products a company has the ability to single out quality related issues,
improve inventory accountability, distinguish product for individual customers,
and maintain inventory control.
Product
Traceability information is a topic that is covered in most production and
inventory control articles and publications.
I was able to find some information from some APICS articles as well as
in two publications by George W. Plossl in his books on Production and
Inventory Control—Principles and Techniques.
Plossl,
George W. 1995 Production and
Inventory Control Principles and
Techniques. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall,
Inc.
APICS
Inventory Management Reports. 1997. CPIM
Inventory Management—Reprints. Falls
Church, VA,; Library of Congress
Foster, S.
Thomas. 2001 Managing Quality—An
Integrative Approach. New
Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
McCarthey
and Associates. Intergrated Software for
the Meat Processing Industry—UniWorks.
Australia.