Material traceability that survives an audit

Traceability questions come in two directions, and a system that answers one may be useless at the other.

Forwards: this heat of material was suspect — which jobs used it, and where did they go? Backwards: this part came back from a customer — what went into it?

Where the chain usually breaks

• Receipt. Material is booked into stock without opening a lot, so there is nothing for later movements to attach to.
• Issue. Material is issued from free stock rather than from a specific lot, and the link is lost at the most important moment.
• Return. Material comes back from a job as a plain movement and does not rejoin the lot it came from.
• Subcontract. Parts leave the building and come back, and the chain has a gap at the gate.

What good looks like

A certificate of conformity should be produced from the record, not assembled by hand. If somebody has to look things up to produce it, the chain is not complete — the certificate is being reconstructed rather than reported.

The test worth applying: pick a despatch from six months ago and ask which heat of material is in it. If that takes more than a minute, the traceability is procedural rather than structural.

Sector requirements

Requirements differ by sector and customer, and your contract is the authority rather than any general guidance. For aerospace, EN 9100 is the relevant quality management standard; the British Standards Institution publishes the current version and its scope.

What this does not cover

General practice only. Your own customer contracts, industry approvals and regulatory obligations set the actual requirement, and they take precedence over anything here.

Quality and traceability in Keystone · Aerospace supply chain