Traceability is defined as the ability to use IT to track product movements, implying the application of digital devices to product and transaction life cycle management, resulting in increased efficiency, deployment functionality of products and the rationalization of corporate production management.
Within the framework of internal management, more and more industries focus their efforts on compliance and quality, two factors that lead to traceability, which, besides facilitating absolute control of quality, helps manage complaints, damaged products, inefficiencies in production and distribution of responsibilities.
In short, traceability becomes a risk management tool.
But there is a distinction between two terms that are often confused, but refer to different stages of production: tracking and tracing.
• Tracking: monitoring controls the movement of the product from one sequence to another and how it will move during the production process. It can be exploited to keep track of where the parties are involved, who worked on it, until it is assembled and completed. In summary, traceability shows the progression of production.
• Tracing: the track involves identifying the origin of a product’s component through records and visibility throughout the supply chain. For example, material certifications, source certificates, and purchase order numbers allow you to bring the parts back to the appropriate sources. The track shows production authentication.
Why is traceability so important in production?
First of all, it does not fall under the responsibility of a person or a company, but involves more than one subject of the whole supply chain, which leads to the accountability of multiple suppliers along the same production chain.
But above all it is used to demonstrate the origin of the product, the lack of counterfeiting and the features to be respected.
With t.fabrica, the MES/MOM platform by Techsol, the products are traced throughout the production cycle and a genealogy of the product itself is available, in graphical form, allowing you to immediately go back to all the events collected at each production stage.
In addition, Barcode and RFID management capabilities allow a complete identification of all managed materials.
What are the Benefits in the end?
• Access to complete and updated information in real time
• Elimination of paper support, which involves the cancellation of an important cost and a transaction that would slow production, causing the increase of work hours needed to complete and archive all the practices
• Deleting transcript errors
• Immediate visibility of finished workings and stocks
• Storage of all production and stock data for tracking machine status