Every PO, print and customer spec read into a one-page contract review before anyone accepts the job.

The PO says what the customer is buying. The print carries the callouts. A customer specification may add a testing frequency, a marking rule or a packaging instruction nobody repeated on the order. Your front office boils that down to one decision: can we run this, and do we know enough to begin? Some shops call it order review, and the trade press calls it contract review.

In the test, AI reads copies of those documents and writes a one-page review: the process and the specification revision named, hardness and case depth callouts, testing frequency if one is stated, packaging and marking requirements, and a list of the conflicts or blanks a person must clear. It doesn't accept the job, pick a furnace or decide which document governs.

Commercial orders run thin. A 2021 Thermal Processing column by a heat treater's quality director notes that commercial heat treating has loose purchase order requirements, that contract review applies to every job anyway, and that his shop has more than one person go over each contract. The Metal Treating Institute's one-page purchase order checklist shows what a complete order would carry: material condition and heat lot, machining or grind stock, the hardness range, case depth stated as total or effective, whether every piece must be hardness tested, where to test and where not to, how many pieces, straightness or flatness, secondary steps such as blasting or rust preventative, finish expectations like bright or no scale, packaging if it differs from how the parts arrived, and handling from bulk to white-glove. The draft walks that list against each order and writes down only what it found.

The review asks whether you can run it, not only what it says. A 2019 Thermal Processing column describes contract review as confirming you have the staff, approvals and equipment, against documented limits such as the range a furnace is qualified for and the tests you can perform afterward. A job asking for a test your lab doesn't offer can't be accepted. The person doing the review need not understand metallurgy, it says, but must know those limits and when to stop and ask quality or engineering. Trade writing also warns buyers against assuming a shop that anneals can case harden a gear, or that a belt line suited to small steel parts can take large castings. Share your process and capability list and the draft marks where an order seems to reach past it, for a qualified person to decide.

The documents disagree, and no rule settles it for you. A December 2021 column in the same magazine says conflicts between a purchase order and its drawing, or a purchase order and a referenced specification, are common, and that some quality people treat the PO as superseding while others give the drawing that weight. It ties the answer to your own quality system and risk tolerance, and recommends documenting the issue on the PO or in writing instead of taking a verbal change. The author says that when a customer won't correct a conflict, his company returns the work. So the draft quotes each document and says where it sits, and never names a winner. How your shop settles it stays with your staff, and this page is not legal or engineering advice.

Revisions and defaults hide in the customer's own paper. One automotive supplier's posted heat treat specification expects its heat treater to hold the latest drawing revision with any purchase specifications, listing requirements such as incoming material, case depth, surface and core hardness, hardenability and sampling. It treats case depth as total when the paperwork doesn't say total or effective, falls back on SAE J423 when no method is named, and allows no rework without prior approval from its receiving plant metallurgist. A 2020 Thermal Processing column adds a caution from the buying side: standard remarks on a PO can carry obsolete requirements once an internal procedure changes. The draft copies each revision exactly and shows a blank revision as a blank, because a number that is old or missing changes the job.

What your reviewer checks. That's usually whoever accepts jobs at your shop, or your quality manager. An article on running a heat treat audit, first printed in Industrial Heating and reprinted in Gear Technology in 2013, tells auditors to cross-index each part number to its drawing, its specifications with their testing requirements, and special needs such as distortion or handling, and to ask whether the shop uses a procedure for reviewing design and specifications against loading method, process and equipment. Your reviewer holds each draft to that same kind of standard: callouts copied correctly, real conflicts named, none invented, and nothing marked accepted.

After your reviewer's yes, new orders get a one-page review as their paperwork arrives, for about 30 days.

A qualified person on your staff reads each one, clears the open items and accepts or declines the job. Scoring carries on through that month, and whether anything follows is a separate choice with its own price.