How to maintain Batch traceability for products with extruding process

Hi all,

In gum manufacturing process, the intermediate product is passed through extruders for sheeting. 90% of the material gets extruded easily but the remaining 10% gets extruded only when the other batch is put into the extruder. In this case the resulting batch will always have a 10% of mix-up of two batches. We have good procedures to maintain the traceability till the final product if we ignore the 10% mix-up which we do not intend to. :headhurts:

I would like to learn from your expertise, that how do you handle such situations?? :uhm:

Running a "Dummy" batch in between the two batches could have been a soloution, but then I am not aware what all materials can be used as "Dummy" in gum manufacturing process, because our raw materials especially "Gum base" is pretty costly.  

Regards

Dear Meena,

Maybe someone will have some ingenious idea but it looks like a classic example for where batches are defined on a time basis, albeit varying I guess, or maybe not (?).

There are some sort of analogous cases in previous threads here, eg continuously topped up grain silos.

Iit's surely not an ideal solution but options become limited. The method is mentioned as a "viable" approach in my attachment tr1 in a parallel traceability thread (Frank88Maurice).

Rgds / Charles.C

Hi Charles,

I could not interpret " batches are defined on a time basis" ! :headhurts:

In our case, the raw amterials are processed to manufacture an intermediate whihc is futher processed to get the final product. this intermediate is manufacured in various lots(standardized) in multiple machines. then one by one the intermediate product is passed through the extruder. The seggregation of batches after extruder is done on weight basis eg X Kgs of A batch is put into the extruding machine and X kgs of material is collected after the extruder which is considered to be the "A" batch !!

Now this ---- Batch will have 10% material of the "A-1" batch.

I hope I am clear in stating my point !!

How to solve this traceability issue !! :(

Dear Meena,

quoting tr1 -

Manufacturers  of  food  delivered  in  bulk  may  only  be  able  to  define  a  product  batch  within  a defined time frame such as a day’s production. Users of bulk ingredients may only be able to define an ingredient batch in terms of a number of mixed deliveries over a defined date range.
However,  other  manufacturers  or  caterers  may  be  able  to  define  a  batch  as  a  small  number of product packs. The majority of food businesses will adopt an approach between these two extremes.

 

Rgds / Charles.C

PS - I didn't claim you would like it. :smile:

Wow, I got a solution !! Now I can handle it !! :happydance:

Thanks Charles :spoton: .

I don't know all the details of your process, but would it work to consider one batch to be 10% of Run A and 90% of Run B?

I agree with Charles.  Look at a batch as a unit of time.  Could be a "day" or "shift" depending on cleaning schedules, down time for maintenance, or any other lengthy interruption of manufacturing.  This of course could mean that you may have to increase or weigh the sampling plan  more towards the raw material change over. "May" of course being operative, but as long as your trace designation with micro samples, production records, packaging, and QA records match, then you have achieved traceability. Now you can test it with a mock recall!  :boomerang:

Traceability is essentially keeping track of chronological interrelated information.  

As a crab processor compliant with both Trace Register and MSC, we deal with multiple vessels, harvest areas, landing dates, live storage, etc. All of this is tracked into an aggregate lot for the finished goods.  So far so good!

Hi CMHeywood,

About 8% of material remains inside the extruder which comes out when the next batch is pushed into the machine. this 8% becomes the part of new batch.

Hi Meena,

Some people use time to define batches as suggested by Charles or you could work it so you have 3 batches:

Batch A 90% of 1st Batch

Batch B 10% of First Batch/10% of 2nd Batch

Batch C 90% of 2nd Batch

Regards,

Tony

Yes, basis the expert inputs received through this forum, I plan to design the traceability such that all the batches are passed through the extruder in a recorded sequence. This way, I will always have the traceability for that "10%" mix-up ALWAYS.

Would that suffice the general requirements of "Traceability" ?

Yes, basis the expert inputs received through this forum, I plan to design the traceability such that all the batches are passed through the extruder in a recorded sequence. This way, I will always have the traceability for that "10%" mix-up ALWAYS.

 

Would that suffice the general requirements of "Traceability" ?

Dear Meena,

I sincerely hope you have some mathematically adept Production controllers. :smile:

Rgds / Charles.C

I used to work in a pasta company that used extrusion of the semolina dough with regrind added in (talk about a traceability nightmare).

We used to do our lot codeing how it was suggested before based on the time it was packaged, unless there was more than a few days between when it was made and when it was packaged...

But pasta is a very low risk product (already cooked), has a low water activity, has a long shelf life (2+ years), and would get eaten up by the large east coast Italian population that was nearby... so if the date was a few days off between extrusion and packing it would be ok.