Control documents

What are control documents? Control documents are documents provided by a producer to a purchaser in accordance with the requirements of the order when the corresponding steel products are delivered. The control documents are validated by a responsible person of the producer and in some cases also by a representative of the buyer or by the inspector appointed by official regulations.

The storage and transmission of the inspection documents is done in paper or electronic form. When a quality management system is set up at the producer's premises, the control documents are naturally a part of it.

What are the different types of control documents? Four types of control documents are defined in a French standard of European origin, the NF EN 10204 standard.

- type 2.1: The certificate of conformity to the order in which the producer declares that the products delivered comply with the requirements of the order; this document does not include test results.

- type 2.2: The inspection report in which the producer declares that the delivered products comply with the requirements of the order and in which he provides test results from an inspection of products corresponding to a given specification and a given manufacturing process.

NOTE: The inspected products are not necessarily delivered products.

- type 3.1: The acceptance certificate 3.1 in which the producer declares that the delivered products comply with the requirements of the order and in which he provides test results obtained on the inspection unit corresponding to the delivered products.

- type 3.2: The acceptance certificate 3.2, a document, prepared by both: - the authorised representative of the producer's control department, independent of the manufacturing departments,

- and the buyer's representative or the inspector designated by official regulations. In this document, both parties declare that the delivered products comply with the requirements of the order. Test results are also provided.

A bit of history: The CCPU The Certificat de Contrôle de Production en Usine (CCPU for short) was the name of one of the control documents defined in the French standards before the standards used the expressions indicated above. This document, corresponding to the current 3.1 acceptance certificates, was completed when the inspection was carried out :

- by an agent of the producer's factory,

- on samples taken from the batch of products delivered,

- without customer acceptance.

This inspection document accompanied a delivery of steel products and made it possible to guarantee, in particular through the test results, compliance with the contractual characteristics defined by the order specifications.