Product Tracking

and Genealogy

Product Tracking and Genealogy

EZ-MES allows you to track your products through your whole organzation and even when they leave your organzation to your customer.

Types of Tracking

For every product you will be able to track all the consumed parts, the suppliers that supplied the parts, the people that worked on the product and when they worked on it, the equipment that was used to manufacture the part, Lot numbers, Serial Numbers, the measurement data that was acquired, if there was any rework etc. Basically anything you would like to know can be retrieved from EZ-MES with a couple off mouse clicks. Just scan the barcode of the product, or enter the Serial Number and you will get a form from which you can access all the different aspects.

Organizing Tracking

The simple tracking features with EZ-MES will help your organization in many ways:

Access to historic production data
Vendor Quality Control and Liability
Customer Service
Production Resource Usage
Compliance with Government Regulations
Service, Recall, Warranty, Maintenance and Repair

Basically, essential information for any Manufacturing Operation

This functionality is a basic requirement for efficient operations. At the moment any of these mentioned features cannot be executed in a couple of minutes, you will risk loosing your competitive advantage by something simple like good record keeping. Your product can be perfect, but the competition can still beat you when they have their operational act better organized.

The blocks below show the EZ-MES features with respect to Product Tracking and Genealogy.

Blogging Feature

For each operation blogs entries on the parts or on the travelers can be added, beside the blogging feature each traveler contains a general comment area.

Configurable Syntax for SN

The syntax of serial numbers is completely configurable, it can be a combination, of lot numbers, sequence numbers, specific part data, date information, anything you can think of, the system will automatically generate the numbers.

Direct find for Serial Numbers

Just press F9, and enter (or scan) the Serial Number, if it is a part it will open the part record, for the Lot the lot will be shown with the individual part records.

Exception Management

By using product and process specifications exceptions can be forced and travelers can be blocked for further processing. Specific flows can be used to create e.g. a Material Review Board.

Future Activities

On each part, lot, batch and on each Traveler, future activities can be defined. The future activity will enable the user to route a part or traveler to a different flow definition when a step is entered or finished.

Hierarchical Flow Definitions

For operations consisting out of a number of steps, but which are used multiple times, a separate Flow Definition can be defined which can act as a single step in a higher level Flow Definition. This enables unlimited granularity for the Flow Definitions.

Hold

Every user with access rights to the system can place parts on hold. Different Hold Flows can be designed for different nonconformity resolutions.

Lot and Batch Tracking

Lots (a grouping of discrete individually traceable parts, e.g. a lot of wafers), Batches (non-discrete parts, e.g. glue, or a grouping of discrete parts without the need for individual traceability, e.g. nails) and individual Parts can all betraced and have a full history.

Material Consumption

EZ-MES can keep full traceability of all materials that are consumed by other materials during the manufacturing operations. If you want to enable this feature you can define an individual consumption data entries for each consumable.

Part States for disposition and activity

Parts (Including Lots and Batches) can have different states that clearly show the disposition and the current state. For the disposition the following basic states exist: Inventory, Scrapped, Hold, WIP, On Order, Shipped. Besides these dispositions state parts can have an INPROCESS, CUED, and DONE activity state.

Process Specifications

Upper and lower control limits can be set for each data entry for each operation. Any data entry outside this range will force an exception. If the specification is product specific, use the Product Specifications Definitions.

Product Genealogy

Full product genealogy with unlimited number of levels (of parent child relations) is kept by the system. The main parent is the part that is being tracked in the system but all relations with consumed parts are maintained. E.g. it only costs a couple of mouse clicks to find all affected parts by a bad batch of glue. So Where-used and hierarchical genealogy information is easily accessible.

Product Specification Definitions

For each product specifications can be defined. Using these product specifications a single process step can distinguish the different products passing through, blocking one part when a specific value is entered while another part can pass.

Revision Control

Flow Definitions, Step Definitions, Part Definitions and Data Entry Definitions are all revision controlled. When a new revision is created the relation with the parent is recorded. The system allows to have multiple revisions active at the same time (not recommended).

Serial Numbers

For individual parts, lots and batches serial numbers can be defined. The system will check if manual entries are truly unique, or can automatically generate Serial Numbers with configurable formats (Date information can be included in the format definition).

Shipping Records

When parts leave the organization when they are shipped to customers the system will keep full traceability. Shipment information and packing slips are tracked by the system as well.

Standard Operation Tracking

For each step of a flow the system will track (on each Part, Lot or Batch and for each Traveler):

Time In / Time Out / Sign Off User / The Next Step

Simple step settings can include: Cue time, process time, Start user. Beside these a wide range of custom data entries can be defined for each step.

Supplier Tracking

For each Part Definition one or multiple suppliers can be defined. Beside the supplier the manufacturer of the part can be defined as well. (So it is no problem to have a part with a single manufacturer supplied by 2 different suppliers, the system will keep full traceability).

Tracking of Rework

Each Part, Lot or Batch will have full history records. On special Part History reports any exception, e.g. Hold, Rework or Scrap is clearly marked.

WIP Report

The Work In Progress (WIP) report provides visibility to where work is at all times and its disposition. For each production Flow the parts and or travelers can be shown for each operation. Using the hyperlinks in the report parts, lots, batches and travelers can be opened directly.

Product Tracking

and Genealogy