Compliance & risk
Certificate of conformance (CoC)
A certificate of conformance is a supplier's signed statement that the delivered goods meet the specified requirements — drawing revision, material specification, and applicable standards. In aerospace, defense, and medical supply chains it is normally a condition of acceptance.
Also known as: CoC, certificate of conformity
An operational bottleneck, not just paperwork
Where a CoC is required, material without one is not usable. It may be physically present, correct, and on time, and still cannot be released to production.
This makes documentation chasing a supply activity rather than an administrative one. A part that arrived on schedule while its certificate sits unsent in a supplier's outbox is, for practical purposes, late.
Why certificates go missing
Rarely refusal; nearly always process. The certificate is produced by the supplier's quality function while the order is handled by its sales function, and the two are frequently not connected. The request arrives in one inbox and the document needs to come from another.
Chasing it therefore requires the same persistence as chasing the order itself — a second follow-up loop, running in parallel, with its own failure modes.
How Evolinq handles it
Evolinq chases required documentation in the same conversation as the order, so a certificate gap surfaces before the material is needed rather than at goods receipt.
Frequently asked questions
What is a certificate of conformance?
A certificate of conformance is a signed supplier statement that delivered goods meet specified requirements, including drawing revision, material specification, and applicable standards. In aerospace, defense, and medical supply chains it is typically required before material can be accepted into production.
What happens if a certificate of conformance is missing?
The material generally cannot be released to production, even though it is physically on site and correct. In effect the delivery is incomplete, which is why chasing certificates is an operational activity rather than a purely administrative one.