4 replies to this topic

[pherish]

We are producing frozen potates. We can not trace our product from raw material. Because we buy raw materials (patotes) from a lot of small producers and we storage them in a big storage room (under temperature and humudity control). But we do quality control all raw materials before we put them in storage area and records are kept. because of putting them in same place we don t know which potates we used.
but we do this also: We do quality control of raw material which we take from storage room for processing and records are kept. we can trace from that moment, all stages of processing and the distrubition of the finished product to customer.

Is this cause a problem? Can we manage BRC audit? or what can we do?

[Charles.C]

Dear Pherish,

Do you mean the raw material is simply delivered loose in piles, ie no packaging at all ?

I think a similar (difficult) problem was recently discussed in this thread –

http://www.ifsqn.com...showtopic=12285

The consensus was that that some kind of system to define / trace the batches was required. This may involve substantial work unfortunately. I suggest you read this thread and then come back with any queries.

Anybody else with other ideas or improvements very welcome to comment of course.

Rgds / Charles.C

[pherish]

First of all thank you for your answer Charles.C

yes we buy raw material without packages. they came with trucks. When they arrive on site, we do some kind of quality and quantity check. we have a record for this right. On this we record any batch details of the delivery, include the supplier and some kind of batch code; the harvest date and variety etc.

we put allcoming raw material in same storage room. but we can not seperate them. baceuse some of them are small amount and also We don thave enough space to put them seperately. So all incoming material are mixed. when we start production we don t know which potatoes we used that day.

When we start production we take potato from storage room and we give new batch number and we do some quality and quantity check and we record them with thier new batch code. from this moment we can trace product till customer.

[Allsafe]

you will need to refine your traceability a little more. You need to know how long the potatoes are in the raw material store for e.g. for potatoes packed today where from suppliers X (which you will know already from intake records) received over the last Y days.

[Saviour]

For traceability it is essential to have lot identification.
If we cannot identify the lot of raw material used for food preparation it will not be possible to trace the raw material in case of any outbreak and thus how much of the finished product manufactured with that raw material.
If potatoes come in loose form either that may be stored in pallets by palletization system or
you may think of packing in bags and giving them a identification lot number.

By applying any of the above methods definitely your storage capacity will increase, I understand you are not filling storage room full up to its roof.

Ofcourse investment is needed in any case.

Regards