About the client
An electronics manufacturing services provider assembling control boards and industrial sensors across multiple plants, largely for customers in regulated end markets who audit their suppliers.
The problem
Component sourcing lived in one system, the approved vendor list in a shared drive, and the record of which lot went into which build in the plant's own paperwork. Each was defensible on its own. Together they meant a customer audit started with a search rather than an answer.
Substitutions were the sharp edge. When a part went to allocation and a plant qualified an alternate, the decision was sound but the paper trail for it sat in an inbox.
“Every audit began the same way: someone walking to the warehouse.”
What changed
Sourcing, the approved vendor list and goods receipt now write to the same record. A build carries the lots that went into it, the supplier each lot came from, and the qualification decision behind any alternate.
AuthentiK turns those events into a verified history per build rather than a document assembled afterwards.
How it works now
An audit request is answered from the record. Which lots, from which suppliers, received when, against which purchase order and which approval. The genealogy already exists because it was captured as the work happened, not reconstructed once it was asked for.
What to take from it
Traceability is cheap when it is a by-product of the work and expensive when it is a project. The difference is whether sourcing and receiving write to the same place.
