Staying audit-ready on traceability
Auditors ask you to trace a random lot in both directions, usually within four hours. What makes that easy is what you captured months ago.
A mock recall is a test of what you recorded, not of what you can find. An auditor picks a lot at random and asks two questions: everything that went into it, and everywhere it went. Most schemes expect an answer within about four hours.
Sites that pass comfortably captured the links as the work happened — supplier lot recorded at weighing, finished lot recorded at packing, despatch recorded against customer. Sites that struggle are reconstructing a chain from three systems and a folder of delivery notes.
The gap is almost never the recording of lots. It is the joining of them. Plenty of sites can tell you every lot they received and every lot they shipped, and cannot connect the two without going through paper.
What to actually do
- Capture supplier lot at the point of weighingNot at receipt, not at the end of the day. At the moment the material goes into the batch.
- Give every batch a number before it startsA batch identified after the fact is a batch somebody has to remember.
- Record the finished lot against the batch, not the shiftA day’s output covering three batches is not a trace, it is a range.
- Keep despatch tied to lotOne up, one down is the legal floor. Connecting them through the batch is what makes a recall surgical instead of total.
- Rehearse itRun your own mock recall on a random lot and time it. The first attempt is always slower than anyone expects.
Batch records in NextBatch are generated from the recipe and carry lot numbers, checks and photos against the run itself, so a trace in either direction is a query rather than an afternoon.