Moving to Lot Control in QAD

Posted on: September 30, 2017 | By: Brian Clark | QAD Manufacturing

When clients express an interest in implementing lot tracing in their ERP environment, there a few questions that have to be answered to properly define the scope, timeline and investment of the project. 

1. Do you really need it?  It can be surprising how many companies meet the needs of their customers’ traceability requirements outside of their ERP system.  As long as a thorough, reliable paper trail is captured throughout the manufacturing process, the overhead of maintaining traceability in the ERP system may be avoided.  

2. Are you prepared to implement Lot Control?  Within an inventory transaction, a lot controlled item must be transacted at an additional level of detail than an item that is not lot controlled.  Ideally, the ERP system will have an “earn a label” feature, by which the user gets an accurate inventory label at the conclusion of a successfully executed transaction.

3. Is a Bar Code Data Collection application an option?  When the right process for inventory control has been defined, successful implementers of lot control policies in their ERP systems utilize bar code data collection applications on wireless devices to actually perform transactions.  It is as important to remember bar code enabled transactions cannot make a bad process better, they can only make a bad process faster.

4. How extensive are the traceability requirements?  Implementing lot control does not need to be “all or nothing”.  The needs of the business should be clearly understood so the appropriate subset of items is lot controlled – too much lot control can be needlessly burdensome, too little can expose the business to risk.

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