Traceability - Feature Deep Dive

How long does it take to perform a recall or mock recall during an audit? How much time does your team spend preparing for a full recall? Being able to track and trace ingredient and finished product lots is an essential component of a food safety program for any food manufacturers, and failure to perform during an inspection is not an option.

Mar-Kov’s Vittles software allows you to impress food safety auditors with the speed, ease, and level of detail provided during a recall exercise.

The following video runs through two mock recalls in Mar-Kov’s Vittles software. In the video you will see two mock recalls, one that traces a raw ingredient and one that traces back a finished good.

Trace Child

This allows you to trace everything that was made or shipped with an ingredient or component lot. When you search for a lot you can search, sort, and filter by:

·         Lot number (internal, manufacturer, or supplier)
·         Supplier name, manufacturer name
·         Date of order, date of receipt, date of manufacture/production, expiry date
·         Item code (supplier/internal) or item description

Once you have selected your lot you can see the all information you have stored for the lot. This includes everything you could search for from above, as well as a wealth of other information such as test results and the manufacturers’ certificate of analysis (C of A) if it is on file.

You can see all of the products you have made with this lot, including:

• Date of production

• Lot/batch numbers

• All batch information recorded in production

• Product testing records and certificates of analysis

You also quickly retrieve all of the shipment information for impacted products that have gone out the door such as:

• Item, quantity, and lot shipped

• Customer shipped to with their address and contact information

Trace Parents

This report is the opposite of the trace child. With this report you can trace everything that went into making a particular product lot. Just like trace child you can search, sort, and filter using a variety of data points. If your client can’t provide a lot number you can find the lot by looking for for the particular item, the client name, and sort by the date of shipment to find the lot they are talking about.

Once you run the report you can see:

All the raw ingredients and lots that went into an item including the packaging.

• Each manufacturing and packaging order that was part of converting the raw goods into the finished products.

• You can generate a completed batch sheet for any of the orders.

• The inventory on hand of every raw and finished lot, again, including packaging.
  Any machinery used on that particular order. You can then track the machinery cleaning, sanitization, and maintenance records.

• The testing performed on any lot and the results of the tests.

• Certificates of analysis for any ingredients or products as well as other certificates you may have from that vendor like organic or kosher certification.

Traceability is a key component of a food safety program. Food manufacturers love Vittles because we make it easy to collect, store, and retrieve key traceability information. If you would like to learn more please contact us, we are happy to talk to you.