Certificates and lot records for a fastener order, checked before it ships.

The paper comes from several directions: the maker's test report, an importer's copy, a plater's certificate if the lot went out for coating, and your own receiving record and labels. Someone has to work out which report belongs to the lot on the label, see whether it speaks to the grade and coating on the order, and notice when a box stopped being the box the report describes.

For the test, AI reads copies of those files beside each shipped order and drafts a lot check for every line: the lot on the label, the report it matched, what the order asked for and what the report says about grade and coating, and any re-pack with its parent lot. Where the paper won't tie together, the line returns to your team marked with what is missing. It rules on none of it.

Three kinds of paper, three authors. The Federal Highway Administration's checklist for reviewing structural steel bolting shows how one kind of buyer reads the chain. It wants a mill test report from the steel producer on its own form, not copied onto the manufacturer's report, one for each component. Each component maker adds a certified test report giving the mill heat number, checked against that mill report, and its lot number, checked against the container. A distributor's certified test report follows, with the manufacturer's lot number and any rotational capacity tests the distributor ran, plus the lot numbers it assigned.

A bolt, a nut and a washer can be one lot. Iowa DOT's materials memo says each combination of production lots needs a special rotational capacity lot number, readily identifiable on each container. A 2023 Iowa special provision puts a unique number on the certified test report and the labels, and has containers marked with description, size, quantity and that number. It also keeps the washers with the matched assembly. So splitting a keg raises a question the paperwork has to answer, and the check shows whether it does.

Re-packing is where most trails go quiet. Alabama DOT's marking procedure defines a production lot as bolts processed essentially together through all operations to the shipping container, same nominal size and length, same heat of steel. FHWA's reviewers ask for marks on the containers, not just the lids, and warn against intermixing lots in storage. Your warehouse breaks bulk every day: a keg into boxes, a box into a bin. The check lists every re-pack with the parent lot its label names, and the ones where no label names one.

The test comes after the coating. FHWA notes that galvanized assemblies must have all physical tests done after galvanizing, so results can sit on the maker's report or the distributor's, depending on who had the parts coated. Iowa's provision runs its test after zinc coating, lubrication or any secondary processing, and for its assemblies names ASTM B 695 Class 55 coating, A 563 Grade DH nuts and F 436 Type 1 washers. When a lot goes out for plating after it arrives, the report may predate the coating, so the check compares those dates and shows which document speaks for the finish on the order.

Who tested it, and who decides. For fasteners made solely to a consensus standard, the Fastener Quality Act says end-of-line testing the standard requires to verify a grade marking must be done by an accredited laboratory, and 15 CFR 280.103 allows accreditation through a program affirmed to NIST's director or through NIST's own program for fasteners. The check records which laboratory each report names and doesn't judge it. These rules are cited for context, not as legal or engineering advice. Your reviewer, usually the quality lead, watches that each report fits its lot, every re-pack surfaced and no gap got filled from a similar report.

When your reviewer says yes against the success criteria, each new order that needs paper gets the same lot check for about 30 days, before it leaves.

A person checks every certificate and releases every order. Lines with a break in the chain wait for that person, and nothing ships on a draft.

The fixed price for that month is set before you sign. Anything after it is priced alone, with monthly support once a job is running.