Along with the materials management challenges seen in discrete manufacturing (supplier relations, inventory management, supply chain, production planning, etc), process manufacturing must also consider things like shelf life, material grade, batch management, and regulatory compliance.
To manage shelf life for orders and production batches, consider systems such as FIFO (first-in first-out), which prioritises using the oldest stock. FEFO (first-expired first-out), however, uses the stock closest to its expiration date.
Materials management in process manufacturing often requires sampling incoming product and assigning quality grades. These can be for colour, fat content, or active ingredient percentage, and they can affect the quantities of the ingredients used in individual batches.
Process manufacturers must also consider which raw materials require lot control to enable batch management and maintain traceability back through the batch’s ingredients.