Certificate of Conformance
A supplier's signed declaration that goods meet the agreed requirement — an attestation rather than test data.
What is a certificate of conformance?
A Certificate of Conformance is a signed declaration from a supplier or manufacturer stating that the goods supplied meet an agreed requirement: a specification, a drawing, a purchase order, or a named standard. It is an attestation. It says the requirement was met, without necessarily showing the measurements that demonstrate it. This is what separates it from a Certificate of Analysis, which reports the actual test results for a batch against their acceptance ranges. The two are complementary rather than alternatives, and many transactions call for both — the conformance certificate declares compliance, the analysis certificate supplies the evidence behind it. A related term, Certificate of Compliance, is often used interchangeably with conformance, though it more precisely means satisfying a regulatory obligation rather than a contractual one. When a supplier offers a Certificate of Conformance in place of a Certificate of Analysis, the practical question is whether your quality system accepts an attestation without data.
How Surply uses it
Surply lists whichever documents the seller actually holds and publishes them as they are. A Certificate of Conformance is not presented as a Certificate of Analysis, because the two prove different things and a buyer's quality function needs to know which it is looking at.
Also known as: CoC, certificate of conformity, certificate of compliance, CoC vs CoA.