Traceability is a cornerstone of most manufacturing sectors. Especially in the food industry, losing track of a product can pose a real risk to public health and business continuity. If you want to know how MapexTrace can be your ally in ensuring the quality and safety of your production, read on.
What is traceability?
Traceability is the ability of companies to reconstruct the history of a product, from the beginning of its manufacture until it reaches the final consumer. It is an essential and mandatory set of procedures in many sectors of the manufacturing industry, such as agri-food, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and cosmetics.
For the traceability system to fulfil its purpose, industrial organisations must be able to follow the trace of a product and identify it at any time, through all its stages of production, transformation and distribution, as well as to have all its data under control: raw materials used; the way it was manufactured; its origin and destination; the quality controls it has undergone and their results, etc.
Thanks to this effort, companies are not only able to guarantee the safety and quality of their production, but can also carry out continuous improvement strategies to reduce risks, save costs and achieve operational excellence.
The importance of traceability in the agri-food industry
Having an adequate traceability system is very important for most companies, especially given the current context of globalisation of the supply chain, the increasing demand for information from consumers and the emergence of sector-specific regulations.
In the agri-food industry, the need for transparency, control and knowledge about the origin and treatment of products is even greater. In fact, according to the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN), the traceability system fulfils a number of very important functions for companies in this sector:
- It serves as a tool to achieve a high level of protection of human life and health.
- It provides information within the company to facilitate process and stock control.
- It contributes to quality assurance and product certification
- It facilitates the location, immobilisation and, if necessary, effective and selective withdrawal of products in the event of a food crisis.
- It allows to prove the origin of a problem and the innocence of the company in case of alleged offences against public health or infringements related to the commercial quality of products.
- It is key to dealing with customer complaints about delivered products, being able to provide information on their causes.
Benefits of digitising the traceability system
Although most industrial companies have already started the digital transformation of their factories, some organisations are still reluctant to take advantage of the potential of new technologies in the field of traceability. It should be noted, however, that falling behind and continuing to rely on manual collection of information leads to errors, redundant administrative tasks and unnecessary cost increases.
On the other hand, modernising and digitising the traceability system of an industrial company using specialised software represents a qualitative leap in the management of all this information. Moreover, it is an investment that is recovered in the short term thanks to its positive impact on:
- Safety and quality of production.
- Compliance with industry regulations.
- The level of consumer satisfaction and the company’s reputation.
- Risk and incident management.
- Implementation of preventive actions.
- Early detection of quality failures.
- Verification of supplier performance.
- Stock and stored product management.
- Control of costs associated with the product.
- The company’s continuous improvement strategy.
How MapexTrace helps you boost your company’s traceability system
If you are looking for a traceability software for your industrial company, whatever your sector, you will be interested to know our solution: Mapex, a platform that captures the information generated in the factory in real time and integrates it into the ERP to have a much more efficient stock and consumption control, improve decision making and reduce administrative costs.
With the MapexTrace module, industrial organisations improve their traceability management by controlling raw and semi-finished material batches and automating the printing of end-product labels with reliable, real-time output traceability information.
In addition, with our MES system, companies have under control the consumption of raw materials and semi-finished products, and can capture the traceability data of incoming batches manually or automatically with a barcode reader or RFID technology, or even by connection with automatic systems such as SCADA.
Finally, MapexTrace allows our customers to generate batch histories of the raw materials and tooling used for each of the output batches produced. With this information, companies increase their knowledge of the value chain and develop more accurate continuous improvement plans.
For more information on the benefits of implementing MapexTrace in your factory, please contact our sales team or request a demonstration.
