बैच रिकॉर्ड

01What a batch record holds

A batch record is not a temperature chart. It holds five things: the identity of the batch, the inputs that went into it, the process it passed through, every deviation from plan, and the decisions people took.

Each entry carries the same fields, and the last two are the ones farms skip. Stage. Measurement, with its point. Equipment state, meaning what the fan and dampers were doing. The deviation. The action. The reason for it. And the result, written later when you went back and looked. A record with actions but no results teaches nobody anything.

02Start with what you actually used

Write down the lots, not the recipe. Which straw, from which supplier, how many bales and how old. Which manure, from where, arriving when. The weights you actually put on the heap, including the substitution you made when the cotton seed cake did not arrive.

Mass tells the truth later. DMR reports that a tonne of straw yields about 1.75 to 2.0 tonnes of long method compost, 2.0 to 2.5 by short method and 3.0 to 3.5 by indoor bunker. If your ratio drifts far from the method you ran, either the water or the record is wrong.

03The process states worth logging

Log the states a decision hangs on rather than everything a controller can print. The fill, in tonnes and kilograms per square metre, since DMR works to 900 to 1,000 kg. The levelling off at 45 to 48 °C. The peak at 58 to 59 °C and the hours held there. The conditioning hold, the days it ran, and the ammonia evidence that ended it.

Beside each, write the fan and damper state and the initials of the person on shift. Two identical curves with different people and weather are not the same batch.

• Fill
• Levelling
• Peak
• Conditioning
• Release

04Carry the number forward

The batch number should not die at spawning. It belongs on the room sheet, the spawn lot and the yield record, because that is the only way a third flush problem traces back to a formulation change six weeks earlier.

Paper is fine for a small unit if it is complete and legible and kept where the next shift can read it. What matters is that the record was written while the work happened. A record filled in from memory on Sunday evening is a story, and stories cannot be investigated.