It seems like every time you turn on the TV you are being told about another product recall. Some of the biggest names in manufacturing are still having a hard time finding product within their supply chain and often lose customer loyalty as a result. Many of them have ERP systems in place, but their recalls still tend to break the million-product mark.
Weeks ago, Novartis - the manufacturer of popular OTC drug Excedrin - saw packaging errors lead to a recall. More recently, a major pharmaceutical manufacturer, Pfizer, voluntarily recalled one million products due to a packaging error. Even though they were able to diminish the number of affected products to 30, they still had to recall 14 lots – about one million packaged products. Here is the video response from Pfizer, released within 24 hours of the announcement. In this video, you can see that Pfizer’s impeccable quality control is the main reason behind the voluntary recall.
"The recall involves about a million packets, although only about 30 may actually have been affected" the company said Wednesday in a prepared statement.
In news reports around product recalls, you may see references to lot numbers. Each lot could have upwards of 80,000 products and without granular visibility it is near-impossible to locate bad products within the supply chain quickly and efficiently. As pharmaceutical companies begin to implement item-level serialization, they are finding more ways to utilize that information during events where granular visibility is not only important, but necessary to stay competitive and maintain their consumer confidence.
ProducTrak unlocks the data in your IT assets, enabling you to probe deeper and more accurately into your daily processes. It helps give you a clear, detailed, and immediate picture of events leading up to the recall—and points the way to better and faster decisions. Whether the issue is product contamination, outdated packaging, counterfeiting, recall, or diversion, Acsis’ ProducTrak tools can spread out to every point in your supply chain. Acsis ProducTrak solution has the full functionality to track and trace individual products or assets through its entire lifecycle; as well as manage contract manufacturers, packagers and suppliers at the push of a button. We also provide the flexibility of selecting only the modules needed to address their specific issues or government mandates. In today’s world, companies have to utilize these tools in order to stay competitive, relevant, and above all – safe.
Read more about our solution on our ProducTrak page, sign up for our monthly e-Newsletter, register for our website, and schedule a demo today. For more information regarding partnership opportunities, ProducTrak implementation, Supply Chain solutions, and track and trace compliance, contact us here.
