There are certain industry sectors wherein companies need to have a strong mechanism to handle traceability of its products in terms of batch numbers. Leading examples of such sectors are pharmaceuticals & foods since the products manufactured by companies from these sectors are consumed by end consumers (humans) either orally or otherwise and they are bound by regulation to keep meticulous records.
However, there are other sectors too where batch traceability is important. In the chemical sector batch tracking is key to ensure that any downstream products’ genealogy is available as and when required either in the context of quality assurance or as a part of regulatory needs should hazardous chemicals be involved. Steel sheets or billets carry a unique number (heat number) that helps in tracing it all the way back to the steel mill that manufactured it.
Numbering of batches is usually done in a pre-defined number format and batch numbers are printed/mentioned along with every receipt or issue of any material. Each batch number usually has a set of unique parameters assigned to it and controls can be set based on these parameters. Some examples are shelf life or expiry date, re-inspection date and a bunch of quality parameters.
When it comes to manufacturing processes the batch numbers can be further used for tracking inventory movements, backward integration in the production processes going all the way to the batch number of the raw material supplied by the vendor etc.
Consumer facing processes where batch tracking helps are handling customer complaints, recalling products from market, publishing consume by date, publishing location of manufacturing especially when a company has several manufacturing locations producing identical goods.
Keeping track of batches is easy said that done. Manual tracking is very cumbersome, time consuming, prone to errors and non-scalable. SAP Business One has the capability to deliver on all the requirements mentioned above. Also, it does all this while offering a robust ERP platform that can help companies in improving their operational efficiency across the board.
SAP Business One has been developed keeping the SME sector in mind and offers world class business process practices as standard features at attractive price points. If you would like to know more about why SAP Business One is the right solution for an SME, please click here It is common for us hear from companies in SME segment that SAP solutions are meant for large enterprises and not for us. Please click here to know more about the myths about SAP solutions especially making rounds in the SME sector.