If you are anything like me, you’ve been required to keep lot traceability for the products you’ve built. This is pretty common for medical devices, for example. Which material lot was in that Serial number we shipped? What are all of the serial numbers that used this batch of xyz component?
Your customers want answers and your quality system demands it.
A typical solution is a big pile of paper, photocopied and stuffed into filing cabinets. Ew. In a past life I’ve personally sifted through piles of paper to find these answers. Not trying to do that again!
I want to share an example of how you might do this using Tulip (with a soon to be a library app). How might Tulip handle any number of child (component) parts being used in any number of parent parts (assemblies)? What about the grandparent assemblies, great-grandparent, ad infinium? The processes may be different depending on what you are making, but the solution doesn’t have to be.
Well, one way to think of this is that whenever a child is used in a parent, we establish a relationship. We allow as many serialized (or lot based) components to be assigned to any given parent as the process dictates. If we think about it this way, the solution starts to become much simpler. This app (below) does exactly that - feel free to pipe it into your own applications. Basically, establish these relationships, store them in Tulip tables, and with a click of a button you can look up or down as many levels as you like. Take a look!
