Traceability Across Manual, Spreadsheet and Enterprise Records

Almost every Bangladesh facility we encounter runs three information environments at once: paper files, spreadsheets, and at least one enterprise application. Traceability has to work across all three, and it almost always breaks at the joins.

The paper layer is not the problem it is often made out to be. Physical records can be perfectly traceable if they are filed consistently and someone knows where they are. They become a problem when filing depends on one person, or when the file was never completed in the first place.

Spreadsheets are the real wildcard. They are flexible enough to absorb any requirement and unconstrained enough to diverge silently. Two teams maintaining the same supplier list in two workbooks will, within a quarter, hold two different truths — and neither will know.

Enterprise applications usually hold the cleanest data and the narrowest coverage. ERP and PLM modules tend to capture what was configured at implementation, not what the business actually needs for product information questions today.

The practical work of traceability is therefore less about digitising everything and more about mapping the handovers: where information passes between layers, who re-keys it, and what gets lost. Those handovers are where readiness is won.