Inspection documents: what they can and cannot establish

Documents arrive with an enquiry looking like answers. Usually they are answers to a narrower question than the one you asked, and the useful habit is to read what a document covers before reading what it says.

Three questions do most of the work. What exactly was examined? When? And who says so? A document that does not answer all three is still evidence of something, but not of what it appears to be.

Five questions for any document

• What was examinedOne item, a batch, a type, or a production process? A type test says something about a design. It says nothing about the individual item in your order line.
• WhenA document has a date and often a validity period. An inspection result describes the item at the time it was inspected.
• Who issued itThe manufacturer, a customer's inspector, or an independent body. All three are legitimate; they carry different weight and you should know which you have.
• Against whatA standard, a customer specification or an internal procedure. "Tested" without a named standard is not a finding.
• What is not coveredThe most valuable sentence in most documents. A scope statement that excludes something is telling you where to ask your next question.

Two traps

A specific trap: a document about a material is not a document about a part. A material certificate describes a batch of metal. Whether the part in your hand was made from that batch is established by traceability records, not by the material certificate itself. Both can be perfectly genuine and still not connect without the third document that links them.

Another: a photograph of a document is not a document. It shows that a piece of paper existed. If the content matters, ask for the document.

What to ask us

How this shapes what to ask ANYI: name the exact model, say what conclusion you need to support, and we will tell you which documents exist for it and what their scope is. Where nothing exists we will say so. We do not describe a document as covering more than it covers, and we do not present a general statement about the factory as evidence about a specific model.