Key Supplier's Certification Expired. Found Out During Quality Audit. 🔥
Manufacturing quality manager. Customer audit next week. Routine prep: Verify supplier certifications are current. Pull the files. Check dates. Discovery: Tier 1 supplier's ISO certification expired 6 months ago. Nobody noticed. They're in 23 of our products. Customer would have found it. Automatic supplier disqualification. $2.3M in annual revenue at risk. Scrambled to get updated cert. Supplier had renewed but never sent the new certificate. Crisis averted by 4 days. Built a certification monitoring system. Supplier certificates uploaded. System extracts: certification type, issuing body, scope, expiration date, certified entity. Creates monitoring calendar. Alerts 90, 60, 30 days before expiration. Current state: - 127 supplier certifications tracked - Zero expired certificates in 18 months - 23 renewals prompted proactively - 4 suppliers identified with lapsed certs during onboarding The system doesn't prevent supplier issues. It prevents surprises. What supplier documentation are you assuming is current?