Traceability that survives an audit, from goods in to dispatch

Lot records lived in a spreadsheet maintained by one person. It was accurate, but it was accurate because of her, not because of the system. A mock recall took most of a working day and produced a result nobody was willing to sign.

Labelling was the weak joint. Labels were produced from a separate template file, so a change to allergen wording had to be remembered in two places. It usually was. Usually is not a defensible position in front of an auditor.

Every handover point was given a scan: goods in, production issue, finished goods, and dispatch. Lot and best before data was captured once, at goods in, and carried through rather than re-entered.

Labelling was moved onto the same data. Templates now pull allergen and lot fields from the record rather than from a parallel file, so there is one place to change and one place to be wrong.

We kept the spreadsheet running in parallel for six weeks. Reconciling the two daily is what earned the team's trust in the new record.

Trace time fell from most of a day to under four minutes, and the result is reproducible by anyone on shift rather than by one person.

The most recent third-party audit closed with no findings against traceability or labelling. The team now runs its own mock recall monthly because it is cheap enough to be worth doing.