Quality inspection

A certified casting, a heat-numbered bar or a machined part for a mining OEM is not “in stock” the moment it comes off the truck — it is in stock once someone has checked it. Until now received goods were issuable instantly and the QC step on an order was a label with nothing behind it. Inspection now leaves a record, and only for the items that need one.

Inspection is prompted only for items with linked QC requirements — the requirements ticked on the item’s Quality tab — or the “hold for inspection on receipt” tick on the item page. An untagged bolt never sees a quarantine bin or an inspection step.

Yes — the list of QC requirements is yours. NE Vault starts you with four (material test certificate, certificate of conformance, dimensional inspection report, hardness test report); add your own under Settings → Quality, say a weld visual, a coating thickness check or a pressure test, and rename, reorder or remove them there. Every type on the list is a tickbox on each item’s Quality tab, and the bulk item import accepts them by name.

• Nothing applies on its own: a new type only reaches the items you tick it on, so existing items are unchanged until you do.
• Renaming a type updates every item that has it; past inspection records keep the name they were signed off under.
• Removing a type takes it off the list only — items that already have it keep it until you untick it there.
• For a check that only one item needs, type a one-off requirement on that item’s Quality tab instead.
• Certificate of conformance is fixed: it is the one that issues the CoC PDF, so it can’t be renamed or removed.

Each requirement an item carries becomes its own pass / fail / n/a row on that item’s inspection checklist, on goods receipts, work orders and order lines alike. A QA sheet of your own (a step-by-step procedure or a blank form) can also be uploaded on the item’s Quality tab: it opens from the inspection dialog and is listed in every job pack for that item.

A location has a kind: stock, quarantine or staging. The QC-HOLD preset is the quarantine bin and is created automatically the first time a receipt needs one. Stock in a quarantine bin is shown everywhere but counted nowhere — job material availability, the order ship gate, planning, inventory KPIs and the inventory report all exclude it (the report shows it as “in quarantine”), and despatch and put-away pickers never offer the bin.

• Checklist: a visual-and-count row plus each of the item’s QC requirements, marked pass, fail or n/a.
• Result: Pass, Conditional release (accepted with a noted deviation) or Fail; a failed check needs a Fail or Conditional result and a note.
• Quantities inspected and rejected, and free-text notes — measurements, certificate numbers, deviations.

On a held goods-receipt line, Pass or Conditional moves the accepted quantity out of quarantine into the bin you choose (lots and serials travel with it) and the receipt reads Released once nothing is held. Fail keeps the stock in quarantine and offers Return to supplier. The same dialog records a job’s final inspection on the work-order page and the QC step of each order line.

Where an order line’s part lists “Certificate of Conformance” among its QC requirements, the order page shows a Quality inspection panel for those lines. Once every such line has a passed inspection, Issue CoC renders the certificate — your letterhead, the customer and their PO, each line with its inspection date and inspector, a conformance statement and a signatory — and files it on the order beside the invoice, where the customer can download it. Re-issuing replaces your earlier certificate; a certificate the customer or staff uploaded by hand is left alone.