Inventory Management Today : Where’s The Peanut!

Posted by kparker on February 19th, 2009

Every time a new disastrous report comes out about the current salmonella outbreak, I think of all of the food businesses that are in the unenviable situation that they can’t trace the sales of specific items to their specific customers. In other words, “Where’s the peanut!“

Product recall has been a fact of business life for decades and this is particularly sensitive in the food business as the health of the public is clearly at stake. Many of the smaller food companies have not been able to keep track of this small detail of where they have sent food lots and how, in the event of recall, they can come up with the list of customers to whom they shipped the recalled lots. With modern technology this is no longer a problem. The owners and managers of food companies should be able to sleep better and produce the needed information when the FDA requires it.

Lot numbers of food items can easily be embedded into permanent customer records. The history of every lot shipment will be found in case of the emergency brought on by a recall. The process of doing this is inexpensive and easy to implement and is part of the ever increasing technological changes that are being brought to the small business world.