Provenance
The documented history of a material: who made it, which batch, how it has been held.
What is a provenance?
Provenance is the documented history of a specific quantity of material: which manufacturer produced it, under which batch or lot number, what testing it passed, how it has been stored, whether its packaging has been opened, and how it came to be offered for sale. It is the difference between knowing what a material is claimed to be and being able to show it. In procurement, provenance is what allows a buyer to qualify incoming material without re-testing it from scratch, because the existing documentation can be relied on and audited. Provenance degrades when a link in the record is lost — an unrecorded transfer between warehouses, a repack into unlabelled containers, a missing certificate — and once broken it usually cannot be reconstructed, only replaced with fresh testing. This is why the documentation is worth as much as the material in regulated manufacturing, and why surplus sold without it is worth substantially less.
How Surply uses it
Provenance is the product. Each listing carries the original manufacturer, batch or lot number, Certificate of Analysis, Safety Data Sheet, expiry or retest date and storage conditions, and states why the material became surplus.
Also known as: chain of custody, material traceability, material history.