Batch and Serial Traceability in Türkiye: A Guide for Food and Manufacturing

One day a supplier calls: "There's a problem with the raw-material batch we shipped last month." Your first question is: "Which production runs did I use that batch in, and which customers did I ship those products to?" If you can answer in minutes, you have traceability; if you spend days digging through records, you don't. This guide explains lot and serial tracking, why it's critical, and how to set it up.

Lot vs serial number — two different tools

These two are often confused, but their purposes differ:

• A lot (batch) number identifies a group of products made or purchased together. Ten thousand cartons of juice produced from the same recipe on the same shift can be one lot. A lot answers "where did this group come from, and where did it go?"
• A serial number uniquely identifies a single product. An electronic device, a machine, an appliance — each has its own serial. A serial answers "what is the history of this individual unit?"

Rule of thumb: divisible, grouped, expiry-dated goods (food, pharma, chemicals, cosmetics) use lots. Unique, high-value, warranty-bearing goods (machines, electronics, automotive parts) use serials. Some businesses use both.

Forward and backward traceability

Traceability works in two directions, and the real value is having both:

• Backward traceability (traceback): starting from a finished good, answer "which raw-material lots and which work order made this?" Needed to find the source of a quality problem.
• Forward traceability (traceforward): starting from a raw material/lot, answer "which finished goods did this batch go into, and via which shipments to which customers?" Needed to scope a recall.

In a good system you reach the answer in a few clicks in both directions. That is the difference between minutes and days during an audit or a crisis.

In food and pharma, traceability is a requirement, not a choice

In the food sector, traceability follows the "one step back, one step forward" principle as a legal expectation: every operator must be able to show who it received a product from and who it supplied. In a recall, identifying the affected lot quickly and narrowly is critical for both consumer safety and cost — it means recalling only the affected lot, not all production.

In pharmaceuticals and certain products, tracking goes further still; datamatrix and serial-based verification systems require tracking the product at each change of hands. Confirm your sector's specific obligations through the relevant legislation and regulator.

Expiry dates and FEFO

A close relative of lot tracking is expiry (shelf-life) management. For dated goods, the shipping logic is usually FEFO (First Expired, First Out). The difference from FIFO is the point: what matters isn't when the item arrived, but when it expires.

In a lot-based system, each lot's expiry is recorded, so the system can automatically prioritise lots nearest to expiry, raise alerts for approaching dates, and block expired stock from shipment. This cuts both waste and the risk of shipping a spoiled product to a customer.

Common mistakes

• Capturing the lot at receipt but losing it in production. If the raw-material lot isn't linked to the work order, backward traceability breaks. The lot must travel uninterrupted from raw material to finished good.
• Not recording the lot at shipment. If which lot went to which customer isn't recorded, forward traceability is impossible.
• Manual/spreadsheet tracking. Lot matching can't be sustained by hand as volume grows; one error makes the whole chain untrustworthy.

Setting up batch/serial tracking in your ERP

The right design has the lot/serial number accompany the product through every movement automatically: assigned at goods receipt, preserved in the warehouse, carried into the finished good in production, linked to the customer at shipment. Ideally the operator does no extra work — barcode/datamatrix scanning makes it happen in the background.

The Birasyo Inventory & Warehouse module enables lot- or serial-based tracking per product; the number carries automatically from receipt to shipment, and FEFO logic applies to dated goods. The Manufacturing module links raw-material lots to the work order and the finished-good lot, so backward and forward traceability come from one screen. The Quality module adds lot-based inspection and quarantine to this chain.

Summary

Lots track groups, serials track unique units; the real power is backward and forward traceability working together. In food and pharma it's a legal requirement; elsewhere it's strong protection for warranty, recall and audit. Carrying the number uninterrupted from raw material to customer, and running expiry management with FEFO, turns traceability from a paper exercise into a real safeguard.

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This article is general information. Traceability and lot/serial obligations in sectors such as food, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics are governed by the relevant legislation and regulator decisions; confirm your sector's current requirements through official sources.