What does the Material traceability module do?
Strong material traceability is built in to the Rhombus Factory Information System.
Whether you are making products for automotive, pharmaceutical, consumer goods or aerospace customers, full material traceability is now almost essential to win business.
Every container of raw material, work in progress and finished parts is given a unique number in FIS. We call the container a tin, and the number a tin number. A tin is a quantity of a single part which can be moved independently around the factory. Examples of a tin are: a bundle of bars, a box of fasteners, an octabin of polymer, a coil of steel, a stillage of finished parts.
Each tin of material is allocated a tin number when it arrives at your factory as part of the goods receiving process. The tin number is linked to the supplier's advice note and certificate of conformance. FIS prints a bar-coded label for each tin.
When the tins are put into stock by the Stock control module, each tin can have a different location.
When you enquire about stock of a part, you can not only see the total quantity, but also the quantity in each tin and the location of each tin.
When you start a manufacturing process to convert a raw material into a finished or semi-finished part, you scan the barcode on each tin of raw material to issue it to the works order, and to link it to the new tin into which manufactured parts are accumulating.
An output tin from one operation becomes the input tin to the next operation. After the final operation the tin of finished parts is put into stock at a specific stores location.
In this way traceability is maintained from each tin of finished parts back through all manufacturing processes to the original tins of raw material.
You build a despatch note by scanning the barcode of each tin as you put it onto the vehicle. FIS then knows exactly which parts are on each despatch note, and their manufacturing history.
Key features
- All materials in the factory are recorded at container level.
- Each container has a barcode so that it can be reliably tracked.
- Movements of material in and out of each container are recorded.
- A container of finished product can be traced back through its manufacturing processes to the suppliers of its raw materials.
- You can trace a container of faulty raw material forward, to find the containers of finished product which include the faulty raw material.
- When a container is empty, this is explicitly recorded in the system, thus keeping stock accurate.
Is it suitable for my business?
Material traceability is designed into the system, not added as an afterthought.
You cannot use the system without material traceability.
The strength of material traceabilty in the system is one of the major reasons why our customers choose the system.
It does require strong procedural discipline on the shop-floor, but in return you get complete visibility of your stock and work-in-progress.
External auditors love it.