Manufacturing
Document control in manufacturing
You sit mid-chain: you receive certificates and have to issue your own.
A manufacturer has the documentary problem in both directions at once: it receives certificates from suppliers and has to issue its own to customers. Almost everything that breaks sits in the link between those two directions.
The three layers, outside in
| Layer | What documentation | What breaks |
|---|---|---|
| Suppliers | Material certificates, test reports, approvals | They expire and nobody looks |
| Equipment and people | Conformity, inspections, operator training | The cross-check between machine and operator |
| Customers | What they ask of you: questionnaires, traceability | It arrives on a short deadline and depends on the other two |
Important
The customer layer cannot be handled quickly if the first two are loose. A questionnaire asking for material origin with a two-week deadline cannot be answered unless you started asking your suppliers earlier.
Where to start
Watch out
Storing the certificate is not enough: you must be able to say which delivery it belongs to. When a customer complains about a part from two years ago, the question is not whether you hold certificates but which one was that part's.
Worth knowing
Each industrial branch adds its own — automotive demands batch traceability, chemicals demand current composition — but these three layers are common to all.
›Do I start with suppliers or customers?
Suppliers. Without that, the customer side cannot be answered.
›Does it work if we make to order?
Especially: each order is a case with its traceability.
›What if our suppliers are outside the EU?
That is where origin documentation takes longest and where it pays to start earliest.
A real case
The situation
A manufacturer gets a sustainability questionnaire with a two-week deadline and lacks the data.
What you do
- Answers what it has and states when the rest will come
- Launches an origin request to its suppliers
What you get
Keeps the customer without committing to invented figures, and answers the next questionnaire in an afternoon.
The situation
Each department keeps its documentation separately.
What you do
- Centralises into a file per product or batch
What you get
There is one picture.
The situation
The trace breaks between production and despatch.
What you do
- Ties the batch produced to the outgoing delivery note
What you get
The batch is followed to the customer.
The situation
A client asks about a supply from a year ago.
What you do
- Keeps the file with its date
What you get
You answer without reconstructing.
The situation
Supplier certificates expire without warning.
What you do
- Records expiries per supplier
What you get
The warning arrives before the material is used.
The situation
A review asks for evidence of a control.
What you do
- Shows the record of real operations
What you get
The control moves from assertion to evidence.
This article answers
- industrial document control
- manufacturing supplier certificates
- technical manufacturing documentation
- where to start with factory document control