Manufacturing
Turning one origin into a hundred orders
One reel comes in and a hundred orders go out. Every cut multiplies by a hundred the list of who would have to be called.
You receive material in large format —reels, sheets, boards, sections— and your job is turning it into what each customer ordered. **You are the point where the chain fans out**: what comes through your door as one thing leaves as a hundred separate shipments to a hundred separate destinations. And that fan can only be walked backwards if somebody recorded it while opening it.
How the count opens up
| Stage | How many things there are | What must be known |
|---|---|---|
| Receipt | One consignment | Where it came from |
| Conversion | Many formats | **What came out of what** |
| Dispatch | A hundred shipments | What went to whom |
| **A query afterwards** | **One question** | **Walking it backwards** |
Important
**The point that decides everything is the cut, and it is exactly where least is recorded.** Receipt is nearly always logged, and so is dispatch because it has to be invoiced. What almost nobody ties is the middle link: which incoming consignment gave rise to which outgoing orders. Without that link you hold two correct lists and no way to get from one to the other, which is precisely what is needed when someone asks.
The minimum to be able to walk it backwards
- 1
Identify the consignment on receipt
Using what the supplier gave you, not a fresh internal reference.
- 2
Record which consignment each work order comes from
That is the link, and it is usually a single field.
- 3
Carry it through to the delivery note
If it is lost at dispatch, all the previous work counts for nothing.
- 4
And keep it once the order is closed
Queries arrive when the order is already history.
Watch out
The scenario you must be able to resolve is always the same: **the supplier flags a problem in a specific consignment**. At that moment the question is not whether your process is good, it is how many of your customers received something from it. If the link exists, it is a query and a list. If it does not, the only honest answer covers everything shipped over those weeks — which means calling customers who had no problem at all, a commercial cost that lasts years.
Worth knowing
What traceability your product or certification scheme requires, what must be kept and for how long **depends on the sector and the customer, and is settled by your adviser or certification body**. Here we cover the organisational part: how to maintain the link between what comes in and what goes out without making it a separate job.
›Do I need traceability if my product does not require it?
Required or not, it decides how many customers you have to call on the bad day.
›What if I mix several consignments in one order?
Then record several. An order can have more than one origin.
›Is the supplier's delivery note enough?
It is half of it. The other half is which orders came out of it.
A real case
The situation
The supplier flags a problem in a specific consignment.
What you do
- Allows querying which orders came out of that consignment
What you get
Those affected are called, not the whole customer base.
The situation
Receipt and dispatch are recorded, but the cut is not.
What you do
- Ties the work order to the incoming consignment
What you get
The two lists can be walked in both directions.
The situation
One order carries material from two different consignments.
What you do
- Allows associating more than one origin with the same order
What you get
The trace reflects what actually happened.
The situation
The consignment reference is lost when the delivery note is issued.
What you do
- Carries the reference through to the outgoing document
What you get
The link reaches the customer.
The situation
An order closes and its information stops being accessible.
What you do
- Keeps the file once the order is history
What you get
Late queries have an answer.
The situation
Reconstructing which customers got a material takes days.
What you do
- Gathers receipt, conversion and dispatch in one place
What you get
The query is resolved in minutes.
This article answers
- traceability when cutting or converting material
- one origin going to many customers
- how do i know which customers got a material
- converting reels into orders traceability