Traceability food safety record

This sizes the traceability record a food business keeps: one step back to the supplier and one step forward to the batch. Enter the suppliers, the deliveries per week, the product lines per delivery, the batches produced per day, the days producing and the retention period in months, and the page returns the delivery records per week, the incoming lots to record, the batch records per week, the lot-to-batch links and the records held at any time over the retention period. Traceability is the record that answers a recall in an hour instead of a week; these are its dimensions, from your own figures.

One step back: the lot on every delivery line

Twenty-two deliveries a week at six lines each is a hundred and thirty-two lots to record with their supplier, date and lot code. Nothing else in the system works without that line, because a recall names a lot, and a kitchen that recorded the delivery but not the lot can only answer that it might have had it.

One step forward: the batch that used it

Eight batches a day, six days a week, is forty-eight batch records, each linking to the lots it used. The link is the traceability: given a recalled lot, which batches and which days; given a complaint about a batch, which lots. The page counts the links so the record is designed to hold them rather than discovered to lack them.

Retention is the size of the archive

Records kept for eighteen months at that weekly rate are a known number of records held at any time, and the page prints it. That figure is what decides whether a binder, a spreadsheet or a system holds the record, and it is usually larger than a small business expects. Pro keeps the archive against the site and exports it for a date range.