A delivery refused at goods in
A pharmaceutical customer's goods in team will not accept a delivery of cartons without a certificate of conformance quoting the spec version, batch numbers, quantity and the results of the checks you made. The driver rings from the customer's yard: the CoC was not in the paperwork.
Back at the plant, the quality technician who normally prepares CoCs is on another shift. Someone else hunts for the job ticket, the line check sheet and the board test results, and types the certificate into a Word template. The lorry waits.
A CoC is assembled from five places
The information on a CoC is already recorded somewhere: the specification and version in the MIS, batch and pallet codes on labels, first-off and in-run check results on the line, board test results from the lab or the mill, and quantities on the despatch note. Assembling it for each delivery is manual work, often done at the last minute.
- Spec version and customer reference are copied from the MIS.
- Batch codes are read from pallet labels.
- Check and test results are copied from paper or lab sheets.
- Each customer wants a different template.
- CoCs are prepared after despatch is planned, not alongside it.
What manual CoCs cost
Refused or delayed deliveries hurt customers whose lines depend on your packaging. Quality staff spend hours on paperwork that adds no new information. Copying errors on a CoC, such as a wrong batch number, can be treated seriously by a regulated customer and take time to explain. And when the one person who knows each customer's template is away, the risk rises.
Retrieving old certificates is its own problem. When a customer's auditor asks for the CoC that went with a delivery last spring, it is a Word document saved somewhere on a shared drive, and finding it depends on how it was named.
The work also arrives at the worst time. Despatch is when everyone is under pressure, and asking a quality technician to stop what they are doing to type a certificate for a lorry that is already loaded is how mistakes get made.
CoC generation we build
- Each customer's CoC template is set up once, with the fields they require and their layout.
- When a job's pallets are allocated to a delivery, the CoC is generated automatically from the job record: spec and version, customer reference, batch and pallet codes, quantities.
- Results from first-off and in-run checks, and any board or lab tests linked to the job, are pulled into the certificate.
- Any missing or out of tolerance value stops the certificate being finalised and alerts quality, rather than producing an incomplete document.
- Quality reviews and signs off the certificate, with the level of review you set per customer.
- The CoC is emailed to the customer, added to the delivery paperwork and stored against the job for later retrieval.
| CoC field | Comes from |
|---|---|
| Product and spec version | Specification record |
| Customer reference and PO | Order |
| Batch and pallet codes | Pallet labels |
| Check results | Line checks |
| Material test results | Lab or mill certificate |
| Quantity delivered | Despatch record |
Certificates ready before the lorry leaves
CoCs are produced as deliveries are planned, so they are ready when the lorry leaves. Quality reviews certificates rather than typing them. Values are copied from the records, not retyped. And any certificate can be found months later from the job or pallet code.
Are CoCs typed up for every delivery?
- Certificates of conformance are prepared in Word or Excel.
- A delivery has been delayed for a missing CoC.
- Each customer's template is known by one person.
- Batch numbers and results are copied by hand.
- Finding an old CoC takes a search through shared drives.