Lot-wise traceability means every finished plastic product, whether a fabric roll, a bale of sacks, a bundle of pipes or a carton of caps, can be traced back to the resin, masterbatch and additive lots it was made from. It also works the other way: any material lot can be traced forward to the customers who received products made from it.
Why it matters in plastics
Plastic products take their properties from their raw materials and their recipe. A resin lot with a different melt flow, a masterbatch with the wrong UV loading or a blend with too much regrind can show up weeks later as weak tapes, brittle pipes or faded bags. When a complaint arrives, the questions are always the same: which lots went into this batch, what else was made from them, and where did it go?
How it works from receipt to dispatch
- Receipt. Each resin, masterbatch and additive delivery is recorded with grade, supplier lot and weight, and labelled with a barcode.
- Recipe and mixing. The job's recipe is issued, and the actual weights used are booked against the lots consumed, including any regrind.
- Processing. Tapes, jumbo rolls, pipe batches or molded parts are created in the system with the line, shift and run they came from.
- Splits and conversions. When a jumbo roll is slit, a fabric roll is laminated or tapes are woven, the new item keeps a link to its parent.
- Testing. Test results are stored against the roll, batch or lot, and failed material is held.
- Dispatch. Bales, rolls, bundles or cartons are packed with labels that carry their batch, and the dispatch records which customer received them.
Why paper and spreadsheets break down
Traceability fails at the joins: the mixing sheet that doesn't match the GRN, the roll number written differently on two registers, the regrind nobody weighed. Each manual hand-off is a chance to lose the link. An ERP that captures the data at each step, ideally from scales and barcodes rather than typing, keeps the chain unbroken.
What you can do with it
- Answer a customer complaint with the full history of the batch in minutes.
- Hold every product made from a suspect resin lot before it ships.
- Compare test results by supplier lot to see which material performs best.
- Prove what went into a product when an auditor or a large customer asks.
Formezy records lots at receipt, links them through recipes, production and splits, and stores test results against the finished item, so traceability comes from the work your plant already does. See how it maps to your process on our industry pages.
