How We Check a Supplier Before You Hear From Them
We are not a certification body and we are not your quality department. Here is exactly what we check, what we do not check and where our job stops.
Last reviewed September 2026. If our process changes, this page changes with it.
What we check at registration
Every supplier gives us this before it receives a single RFQ preview. A shop that will not give it does not get previews.
- Certificate numberThe ISO 13485 certificate number as printed, not a screenshot of a logo and not a claim in an email.
- Issuing bodyWhich body issued it. A certificate is only as good as the body behind it, and not every body is accredited.
- Expiry dateAn expired certificate is not a certificate. We re-ask when the date we hold passes.
- Machines and materialsModel and count, and which implant or instrument materials they run regularly, so we do not send a PEEK manifold to a shop that has only cut titanium.
- In house against outsourcedWhich of cleaning, passivation, electropolish and marking they do themselves and which they buy in. This is where lead time and accountability actually sit.
- Audit history, if they offer itWhether they have been through a customer or notified body audit. We record what they tell us. We do not verify it.
What we deliberately do not do
This list matters more than the one above. An intermediary that implies it has done your qualification for you is selling you a risk you cannot see.
- We do not auditWe have never walked a supplier's floor on your behalf and we do not claim to have. An on-site audit is part of your purchasing controls, not ours.
- We do not qualify suppliersAdding a shop to an approved supplier list is a decision inside your quality system. No third party can make it for you, and a regulator will ask you, not us.
- We do not hold any certification ourselvesNot ISO 13485, not ISO 9001, not MDSAP, and we are not a registered device establishment. We are a matching service.
- We do not inspect partsNothing passes through us. The supplier ships to you and answers to you.
- We do not rank or rate suppliersWe match on fit. We do not publish scores, badges or tiers, because we have no evidence base that would make one honest.
Why a certificate is a starting point and not an answer
The most common mistake we see is treating an ISO 13485 certificate as a pass or fail. It is neither. Read three things on it before you rely on it.
The scope line. A certificate can be scoped to design only, to assembly only or to distribution only. A shop can hold a genuine, current ISO 13485 certificate whose scope does not include machining. The scope text has to name machining or precision machining for it to mean what you need it to mean.
The issuing body and its accreditation. Certification bodies are themselves accredited, and the accreditation is what gives the certificate weight. Check the body, not just the certificate.
The date. Certificates lapse. Surveillance audits get missed. Ask for the current one rather than the one that was emailed to you in 2024.
We check the number, the body and the date. You should still read the scope line yourself, because only you know what scope your device needs.
What happens if a supplier misrepresents itself
Tell us. Email with what you found. We remove a shop from the list over a misrepresented certificate and we tell any buyer we matched to it in the previous twelve months. We would rather lose a paying supplier than keep one that lied about a certificate.
Why we publish this at all
Because the alternative is a trust badge with nothing behind it. We cannot show you a certificate of our own, a client list or twenty years of history, and inventing any of those would be the fastest way to deserve no trust at all. What we can do is say precisely what our checks are worth, which is a smaller claim and a checkable one.
Questions about this process
Do you audit the suppliers?
No. We check the certificate number, the issuing body and the expiry date, and we record what a shop tells us about its machines, materials and audit history. An on-site audit is part of your purchasing controls and it stays with you.
If you do not audit, what am I actually getting?
A shorter list. Instead of thirty search results you get up to three shops that hold a current certificate, run your materials and take your part size. Your qualification work starts there rather than at a search engine.
Do you verify the certificate with the issuing body?
We check the number, the body and the date the shop gives us, and we re-ask when the date passes. We do not hold a formal verification agreement with any certification body, so treat our check as a filter and not as proof. Ask the supplier for the current certificate before you release a purchase order.
Who is liable if a supplier turns out to be wrong for the part?
The commercial relationship is between you and the supplier, including the quality agreement and any remedy. We make the introduction and we take no commission on the order. If a shop misrepresented its certificate to us, tell us and we remove it.
Can you send me the certificate before I talk to the shop?
Ask the shop. Certificates are theirs to share and most send them on request. If a shop will not show you a current certificate, that answer is itself useful.