Finding where produce came from
Answer a buyer's question in a minute instead of a week — in both directions.
Because every step from delivery to shipment was recorded as it happened, the chain is already there. You are looking it up, not rebuilding it.
Where did this come from?
A buyer queries a carton, or a laboratory finds something. Start from whatever code you have — a lot code, a pallet code, an order number, a GRN — and trace back to:
- The farms that supplied it
- The fields and crops it grew in
- Every chemical sprayed on it, and when
- The residue tests, and their results
- The pack run and the pallet it travelled on
Where did it go?
The other direction, and the one that matters when something is wrong. Start from a farm, a crop or a chemical, and find:
- Every lot that produce ended up in
- Every pallet those cartons went on
- Every order and buyer that received them
- How many cartons were shipped and how many you still hold
This is what turns “a supplier has a problem” into a specific list of customers to call.
Compliance exposure
The view worth checking regularly, without waiting for anyone to complain. It lists every finished lot where something upstream is a problem — a chemical Europe does not allow, or a failed residue test — together with the buyers who received it.
If it is empty, that is a real answer, not an absence of information. If it is not, you know before your customer does.
Supplier risk
Your suppliers ranked by the problems found in their produce, weighted by how many buyers were affected. Two useful things come out of it:
- Which farms need support or training — most problems are honest mistakes with a legal product, and are fixable.
- Which farms you should not put into shared lots until they are sorted out.
The other views
| View | Answers |
|---|---|
| Co-mingled lots | Which other farms ended up in the same lot as this one. If a farm has a problem, this is who else is affected. |
| Co-location risk | Which clean lots shared a cold room with a problem lot. |
| Producer centrality | Which suppliers reach the most buyers and countries — the ones you can least afford to lose. |
| Buyer concentration | How much of your business rests on how few customers. |
| Mass-balance leaks | Where quantities stop adding up, and which pack run it started at. |
Reading the picture
These views draw the chain as a diagram: boxes for farms, crops, deliveries, lots, pallets and buyers, with lines showing what came from what. Tap any box to open the record behind it.
Anything flagged red is where the problem is. Follow the lines out of it to see how far it reached.
Tracing reads what was recorded. Produce received without a quality check, cartons moved without being logged, an external supplier who told you nothing — each is a gap the trace cannot fill. That is the real reason to keep the daily records: not the paperwork, but the day you need to answer fast.