Inventory & lot tracing

Lot tracing is the ability to answer one question quickly: if this finished batch is a problem, what went into it, and where else did those inputs go? Everything below is in service of answering that in minutes rather than days.

What a traceability record actually has to capture

Traceability is not a document you write after the fact. It is a chain of records created as material moves, and the chain only holds if every link was recorded at the time.

Practically that means three things. Receiving: each incoming lot logged against its supplier, with the supplier's own lot code preserved rather than replaced by your internal one. Production: each run recorded against the specific input lots it consumed, not merely against the ingredient. Dispatch: each finished lot recorded against the customers and quantities it shipped to.

Miss the middle step and you have two disconnected lists. Most operations that discover a traceability gap discover it exactly there - they know what they bought and what they sold, but not which went into which.

FSMA 204 and the July 2028 date

The FDA's Food Traceability Rule under section 204 of FSMA sets additional record-keeping requirements for foods on the Food Traceability List - which includes certain cheeses, shell eggs, fresh fruits and vegetables, seafood, and ready-to-eat deli salads, among others.

The rule works through Critical Tracking Events - harvesting, cooling, packing, receiving, transforming, shipping - and at each one you must capture defined Key Data Elements. Its compliance date was extended by 30 months from the original January 2026 deadline and now stands at 20 July 2028.

That extension bought planning time rather than a reprieve. If you handle anything on the list, the records you need in 2028 are the ones worth designing now, because retrofitting a traceability scheme onto three years of loose history is materially harder than starting it.

Verify the current date and the Food Traceability List against the FDA's own guidance before planning against them - this deadline has already moved once.

Running a mock recall before you need a real one

The test of a traceability system is not whether the records exist. It is how fast someone can use them under pressure, and that is worth rehearsing.

Pick a finished-goods lot at random. Trace backwards to every supplier lot it consumed. Then take one of those supplier lots and trace forwards to every finished batch and every customer it reached. Time it. Many operations that believe they are traceable discover the exercise takes most of a day and depends on one person who knows where the spreadsheets are.

NFL runs both directions from the production records themselves, so the trace is a query rather than an archaeology project.

FEFO, and why expiry beats arrival order

First-Expired-First-Out is the right consumption rule for anything with a date on it, and it is not the same as first-in-first-out. A lot received later can easily expire sooner - different supplier, different production date, different remaining shelf life.

Sorting by expiry rather than arrival, and flagging material approaching its date before a run is scheduled rather than after, is the difference between using stock and writing it off.

What is in the module

Raw materials tracked by lot with quantities, costs, reorder points and expiry. Production runs that consume specific input lots and yield specific output lots. Bidirectional recall tracing. A transaction log of every movement. And a readiness checklist for the record types a traceability programme is expected to hold.

Because it sits alongside the label generator, the recipe that produced a batch and the panel on that batch's packaging are the same record - which matters when a trace has to establish not just what was in a lot, but what the label said about it.

Common questions

Do I need this if I am not on the Food Traceability List? Not for FSMA 204 compliance. Customers, retailers and insurers increasingly ask for it regardless, and a recall is expensive whether or not a rule required you to be ready for it.

Is this a full ERP? No, deliberately. It covers lots, runs, traces and expiry for food manufacturers who need traceability without an ERP implementation.

Can I import existing stock? Yes - raw materials and lots can be brought in rather than re-keyed.

Does it connect to the labels? Yes. Recipes, labels and inventory share one account, so a finished-goods lot ties back to the recipe and the panel it shipped with.