A supplier calls about a potentially contaminated batch. Your warehouse received it two weeks ago. Some cases are still on the shelves; others have already gone to customers.
Can your team identify which shipments contained that batch, how much each customer received, and where the remaining stock is?
That is the practical test of lot traceability. A warehouse may record every incoming lot number and still struggle to answer it if the connection disappears during picking or shipping.
For food and beverage brands, manufacturers, and distributors, this gap matters when responding to a recall, investigating a quality complaint, or providing traceability records. It also deserves close attention when choosing a warehouse management system.
In this article, we look at why lot traceability matters and what a WMS should support out of the box to keep lots connected to your supply chain transactions. We follow a lot from receiving through storage, picking, and outbound shipment, explain the relevant FDA requirements, and look at how expiry management adds another layer of control.
A SKU identifies a product. A lot identifies a particular batch of that product. Two cases can share the same SKU while coming from different production runs, carrying different expiry dates, or being subject to different quality concerns.
Effective warehouse lot tracking preserves that distinction as stock moves through the operation. The system needs to record which lot arrived, where its inventory moved, and which quantities were actually shipped.
The trace should work in both directions. Starting with a supplier lot, the team should be able to find its outbound shipments. Starting with a customer shipment or quality complaint, it should be able to trace the shipped inventory back to its lot and receipt.
Consider a simple example. A warehouse receives 500 cases of a chilled product under lot L2401. It puts 300 cases in one location and 200 in another. Later, it ships 120 cases to one retailer and 80 to another.
Assuming there are no other movements or adjustments, the lot history should account for:
| Transaction or balance | Quantity | Traceability detail |
|---|---|---|
| Supplier receipt | 500 cases | Source, receipt date, and lot L2401 |
| Shipment to Retailer A | 120 cases | Shipment reference, destination, date, and lot L2401 |
| Shipment to Retailer B | 80 cases | Shipment reference, destination, date, and lot L2401 |
| Remaining inventory | 300 cases | Current locations and inventory status |
If the supplier flags L2401, this history gives the warehouse a starting point for finding affected shipments and remaining stock. A report showing all customers who bought the SKU cannot establish which of them received this particular lot.
The difference becomes even more significant when one order is fulfilled from several lots, a pallet is split, or a picker substitutes inventory. The shipment history must reflect what physically left the building.
The FDA Food Traceability Rule, issued under FSMA Section 204, establishes additional recordkeeping requirements for covered businesses that manufacture, process, pack, or hold foods on the Food Traceability List. Coverage depends on the food and activity, with exemptions. The list includes categories such as fresh leafy greens, certain cheeses, shell eggs, nut butters, and specified seafood. It does not cover all food and beverage products uniformly. FDA Food Traceability List.
For warehouses handling covered products and activities, receiving and shipping are particularly relevant. Required information must be linked to the traceability lot:
| Activity | Examples of required information |
|---|---|
| Receiving | Lot code, product, quantity and unit of measure, previous source, receiving location, receipt date, lot-code source or reference, and reference document details |
| Shipping | Lot code, product, quantity and unit of measure, recipient location, shipping location, shipment date, lot-code source or reference, and reference document details |
Specified shipping information must also be provided to the recipient. The FDA distinguishes information that must be maintained from information that must be passed along. Its Critical Tracking Events and Key Data Elements guide sets out those details.
The implication for WMS evaluation is straightforward: capturing a supplier's lot number is one part of the job. The business also needs accessible records connecting that lot to outbound quantities and destinations.
Required information generally must be available within 24 hours of an FDA request, or another reasonable period agreed by FDA. In specified public-health circumstances, an electronic sortable spreadsheet is required, subject to exemptions. As of September 2026, FDA states that it will not enforce the rule before July 20, 2028; its overview also describes a proposed extension of the compliance date to that date. FDA Food Traceability Rule overview.
FDA does not prescribe a particular WMS or require all records to live in one application. Its requirements allow different recordkeeping arrangements. The business value of connected warehouse records is being able to retrieve and explain the information without reconstructing each transaction during an investigation. FDA traceability FAQs.
A WMS demonstration should follow a lot through several transactions. Looking at the receiving screen alone can miss the places where the record becomes incomplete.
A free-text lot number or an optional expiry field may leave downstream processes without the information they need. For products that require lot and expiry control, the receiving workflow should validate those details before releasing the inventory for use. The receiving record needs to make the supplier reference, lot, quantity, and location available to subsequent warehouse transactions.
A pallet may be divided between reserve storage and a pick face. Cases may move again during replenishment. If those transactions preserve only the SKU and quantity, the warehouse can lose visibility into which locations hold a particular lot.
The same question applies to returns, damaged stock, and adjustments: can the team explain what happened to the quantity associated with that lot?
The system may allocate one lot while a picker takes another. Recording the allocation does not prove which stock shipped. Scanning, verification, and exception handling need to keep the physical movement and system record aligned.
This is a useful test for any WMS, including SaaS products: ask it to demonstrate a lot substitution and then show the final shipment history. The deployment model tells you less than the transaction does.
A supplier, co-packer, and warehouse may use different internal identifiers. Those references need a reliable relationship. An internal lot identifier should not erase the information needed to establish where the batch came from.
If receipts, stock balances, and shipment details sit in disconnected reports, an investigation becomes a reconciliation exercise. The team has to establish which records belong together before it can act on them.
Connected records can help identify affected destinations and support a more precise response where the evidence permits. They also help distinguish suspect inventory from other lots of the same product.
Apache OFBiz includes native inventory and warehouse capabilities that businesses can use as the basis of an open source warehouse management system. Its data model contains lot records, inventory-level lot associations, expiry information, facilities, and locations. Lot tracking therefore has an existing place in the core inventory model. Apache OFBiz inventory model.
The receipt and shipment connections are equally relevant. OFBiz links shipment receipts to inventory items. Picklist items and outbound item issuances also reference inventory items, with issuances connecting to orders and shipments. Existing views expose lot information alongside receipt and issuance records. These relationships provide the foundation for tracing a received lot into outbound fulfillment. Apache OFBiz shipment model.
For a business evaluating OFBiz, this means the starting point already includes lot records connected to warehouse transactions. An implementation can then address the warehouse's specific receiving validations, label handling, picking screens, external integrations, and reporting needs.
That distinction matters. Native lot support does not automatically make every field mandatory or deliver every food-specific workflow. A warehouse may need to enforce expiry capture for selected products, validate supplier references, or require a scan when a picker changes lots. Those controls should be defined and tested during implementation.
Open source also gives the business access to the logic behind its warehouse processes. When receiving rules, customer requirements, or partner interfaces change, the implementation team can adapt the relevant services and screens. The core lot and transaction model provides reusable building blocks for that work.
For FDA-related use, the complete implementation still needs to address the applicable data elements, record access, procedures, and reporting. Native lot tracking is a useful foundation; compliance depends on how the business captures, maintains, and provides its records.
Lot traceability helps explain where a batch came from and where it went. Expiry management helps determine which stock should move next.
FEFO, or first-expired, first-out, uses expiry dates to prioritize earlier-expiring inventory when reserving stock for an order. This matters when the order in which stock arrives differs from the order in which it expires.
Suppose two lots of the same product arrive on different days:
| Lot | Received | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| A | September 1 | September 30 |
| B | September 5 | September 20 |
FIFO would prioritize Lot A because it arrived first. FEFO would prioritize Lot B because it expires sooner, assuming it is otherwise eligible for the order.
Using FEFO at reservation brings expiry into inventory selection before the picker reaches the shelf. The fulfillment workflow still needs to ensure that the reserved inventory is picked, or that any substitution is recorded accurately.
Eligibility matters. A customer may require a minimum remaining shelf life at delivery. The earliest-expiring stock may fail that requirement once transit time is considered.
Customer-specific shelf-life checks, transit allowances, and the treatment of expired or held stock should be confirmed during solution design. A WMS evaluation should establish both whether FEFO reservation is available and how these additional rules will be handled.
Short-dated stock also needs attention before it becomes unsellable. A project may call for expiry alerts, visibility for pickers, quality holds, or reports that help the team identify stock for an approved transfer, promotion, or other action. These should be treated as explicit workflow requirements, with their availability and behavior confirmed in the proposed solution.
FEFO and shelf-life controls complement traceability by helping manage waste and customer acceptance. They are separate operational requirements from the recordkeeping obligations described above.
Businesses that also manufacture products may need to trace ingredients into finished goods. Here, preserving history can involve a new output lot linked to several input lots.
For covered transformation activities, FDA specifies records linking relevant ingredient lots and quantities to the newly produced lot. FDA transformation data requirements.
OFBiz's inventory model includes connections to production assignments and produced inventory. This provides a starting point for connecting production and warehouse records within the same platform. The required batch relationships and reporting should be verified against the manufacturer's actual process. Apache OFBiz inventory model.
For businesses that need both capabilities, HotWax Systems also builds Manufacturing Execution and Planning System solutions on OFBiz. Warehouse traceability can therefore be considered alongside the production processes that create or consume those lots.
Before selecting a food and beverage WMS, ask the implementation team to demonstrate a complete lot journey using a realistic scenario. Useful questions include:
These are examples to build on with your own operation's exceptions. A demonstration should let the warehouse team follow the records and understand what happens when the planned process changes.
HotWax Systems has implemented warehouse management systems for the food and beverage industry. Our HotWax Accelerator, built on Apache OFBiz, already supports many of the workflows these operations need.
FEFO-based inventory reservation is one example. Native Apache OFBiz does not provide this capability out of the box. We built it in HotWax Accelerator for a food and beverage client, so expiry dates could drive inventory reservations. That capability is now available to other customers through the Accelerator.
We provide HotWax Accelerator at no additional software licensing cost to customers who engage us for their custom WMS implementations. Implementation services are paid; customers receive access to the Accelerator's source code and can customize it for their requirements.
Businesses can start with OFBiz's native lot and inventory records and the Accelerator's existing workflows, then adapt the solution to their receiving practices, fulfillment requirements, and partner integrations. The Accelerator also provides a modern user interface, search, integration tools, and reporting capabilities to support application delivery.
The first step is to walk through your warehouse's lot journey together: what arrives at receiving, how inventory is reserved and picked, and what records remain after shipment. We can show where existing Accelerator workflows fit and identify the additional controls your operation needs.
Talk to HotWax Systems about a food and beverage WMS built on Apache OFBiz and HotWax Accelerator.