Customer quality questionnaires, drafted from policies and documents you already approved.

The surveys arrive as spreadsheets, fillable PDFs and supplier portal pages, and no two customers ask the same thing the same way. Your quality manager digs through the quality manual, the last audit report, the certificate file, producer statements and last year's answers to the same customer, then decides what your company can truthfully say, and signs.

For the test, AI reads copies of those questionnaires beside the documents your team drew on and drafts an answer to every question, naming the file and page each answer rests on. A question with no approved answer, or one that asks you to promise something new, goes on a list for the signer with the reason. Nothing is signed, uploaded or sent.

Some questions are a customer's own filing, passed down the chain. A customer that reports to the SEC and makes products needing tin, tantalum, tungsten or gold files Form SD under Rule 13p-1 by May 31 for the prior calendar year, after a reasonable country of origin inquiry; the rule's minerals are columbite-tantalite, cassiterite, wolframite and gold, with derivatives limited to tantalum, tin and tungsten. A customer building electrical equipment for the EU asks about the ten substances in RoHS Annex II, each capped by weight in homogeneous materials; four phthalates, DEHP, BBP, DBP and DIBP, joined that list from July 22, 2019. Unless you make the product, an honest answer rests on the producer's own statement, so the draft quotes the one on file with its producer and date, and leaves a blank where there is none.

REACH questions depend on what the customer makes. Under Article 33, a supplier of an article holding a Candidate List substance above the concentration the regulation sets must name that substance to the recipient and answer a consumer who asks within 45 days, so a customer molding or assembling parts asks what your product contains. What you sell is a substance or a mixture, where the information travels in the safety data sheet: under Article 31, even a mixture not classified as hazardous needs a sheet on request when it holds a Candidate List substance at or above the level that article sets. A survey line asking whether a product contains any SVHC therefore needs the producer's current answer, its date and the Candidate List version your team names. The draft marks every SVHC answer dated before that version.

Change notice comes from two places. Most surveys ask how you will tell the customer about a change of producer, site, formula or paperwork. For supply in the EU, REACH requires a revised safety data sheet, marked as a dated revision, to go free of charge to every recipient supplied in the preceding 12 months, and Article 34 has distributors pass new hazard information back up the chain to their own suppliers. Anything beyond that, such as advance notice before you switch producers, is a commitment in your own policies or in what you told that customer last time. The draft answers from the policy and the earlier answer, and marks any request for a longer notice period or a wider promise than the one you already make.

An assessment you already hold may cover whole sections. ACD Responsible Distribution's 2023 edition has 12 Codes of Management Practice, among them handling and storage, product stewardship, internal audits, corrective and preventive action, and document and records control. In Europe, a SQAS Distributor assessment, known as ESAD and set up jointly by the chemical manufacturers and distributors, ends in no certificate: it produces a detailed factual report that belongs to the distributor, who decides who sees it, valid for three years. Together for Sustainability, started by six chemical companies in 2011, asks suppliers for one standardized form in place of separate questionnaires from each member. The draft maps each survey section to the code, report or form that covers it, where the customer accepts one, and checks the dates on every certificate before attaching it.

What your reviewer watches for. Usually the quality manager who signs, sometimes with your regulatory lead. They look for an answer that promises more than your policy does, a certificate attached after it lapsed, a producer statement used for the wrong grade or plant, a firm no that should have read "not known", and a question about a product you only resell answered as if you made it. Every answer either cites its file or sits on the signer's list.

Once your reviewer says yes against the success criteria, each new questionnaire gets a draft for about 30 days.

Your quality manager reads and signs every one before it goes back, and an answer the draft left open stays open until they fill it. A new policy, certificate or producer statement joins the drafts' sources only after your team approves it.

Another job waits for its own decision and its own price.