SAP Global Batch Traceability (GBT) is all about batches, hence the name. Tracing batches throughout their supply chain, making it possible to do complex Bottom-Up, Top-Down analyses and ultimately save time on traceability requests.
As GBT is a new SAP product, new functionality can be added or changed relatively easy and fast to fit the customers' need. Together with SAP we’ve developed new functionality to speed up the Quality Assurance (QA) process. As this department is desperately looking for a single point of truth to base their decisions on, we suggested to extend the use of GBT by adding some functionality.
The first thing is integrating information from Trackwise (an Enterprise Quality Management System) into GBT. This system is well known within the industry and is used to record and manage events (issues) on batches.
Trackwise Integration
Below you can see that we've linked 'Events' to a batch, these events are interfaced from Trackwise and are updated whenever the source data is updated. By showing the status of an event, if it's 'Open' or 'Closed', enabling the QA-officer to get an instant overview of the outstanding events and quickly act on it.
Color Coding the Batch Genealogy
Next up, enhancing the visual batch tree.
"The visual representation of the Batch tree is great, but we need more to determine the bottleneck in a release process"
Well, as it's visual, let's add colors. Colors that indicate if a batch is 'Released', 'In process' or 'Rejected'. Color coding within the genealogy of a batch quickly identifies the bottleneck and speeds up the release process significantly.
GBT now not only serves as the single source for batch traceability but also plays a significant role in the batch release process making it more efficient, safe and controlled.