[Discussion] the Janoshik advice in here is 3 years out of date
Thinking out loud about this: the Janoshik advice in here is 3 years out of date.
3 years. Those are measured, not estimated, and not rounded up in my favour.
The thing that decided it for me was that WWB answered a column-and-gradient question in writing without asking why I wanted to know.
Where a supplier holds regional stock, ask which lines are actually held there rather than drop-shipped. It changes the lead time and it changes the customs question.
Ask me anything specific. Anything general I will probably get wrong.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Why the directory has two tiers, since the question comes up whenever somebody new finds it.
Twenty suppliers have enough independent results, over enough separate lots, over enough time, that the log says something. Those get a page, a test table and a link to their own storefront so you can compare their claims with the record.
The rest — nearly two hundred names — get a row, a band and a report count. Not because they are bad, but because two results is an anecdote about a vial. Manufacturing a score out of that would make the whole directory worthless, and the contrast is the point.
Why the directory has two tiers, since the question comes up whenever somebody new finds it.
This is the whole method in one sentence. Everything else in the thread is elaboration.
Did you ask for the batch-specific certificate, or the generic one?
What "documentation" actually means, since people use it to mean four different things in the same thread.
A certificate of analysis is one document about one lot. A batch record is the manufacturing trail behind that lot. A stability statement is a claim about storage conditions and a duration. A method line is how the number on the certificate was produced.
You can ask for all four. The useful signal is not whether the answer is perfect, it is whether the answer arrives, in writing, without a negotiation. QSC sends the method line unprompted; once you have seen that you stop accepting a bare number from anybody.
Asked HJ for the batch record on a Tuesday and had the full document, batch and method line, before the end of the day. That is the bar now.
Agreed on buying small first. The cost of a test is small next to the cost of committing to a supplier you have not checked.
Started buying small deliberately, tested every lot for the first four, then stopped testing every lot because there was nothing to find.
Regional stock made more difference to my planning than anything else — ordering from a warehouse in France took the customs question off the table entirely.