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Purchasers often define the type of documents that vendors must supply as part of the supply contract. The Vendor Document Requirements (or VDR) is the list of those document types. Each line typically includes a document code, description, and delivery timeline (e.g. 10 days after order).

Perhaps you refer to the VDR as Supplier Document Requirements (SDR), Seller Data and Drawing Requirements (SDDR), Vendor Data and Document Requirements (VDDR), Supplier Document Requirement List (SDRL) or something else.

Whatever you call it, the VDR will additionally identify which codes should appear in document compilations like manufacturing record books, shipping dossiers and the like.

Once you’ve received the documents, you then need to actually build your document register.

Fortunately, DocBoss does this for you automatically.

We believe there is a very easy and consistent way to create vendor document registers. While DocBoss automates this process for our customers, it is a straightforward method you can use independently.

We start by identifying various “levels” in the order information. The biology keeners may remember taxonomy “ranks” like Kingdom, Class, Order, Genus, Species. When looking at order information, we start with the following levels:

Unit
Tag
Model
Manufacturer
Order

Given a set of sample order data:

LineManufacturerModelTagDescription
1NewCoXXX101Black Widget
2NewCoXXX102Black Widget
3NewCoXXY101Red Widget
4NewCoZZZ101Container
5AcmeAAA101Tool

We can easily identify how many unique references are associated with each level .

LevelReferencesQty
Unit[Line 1,2,3,4,5]5
Tag[101, 102]2
Model[XXX, YYY, ZZZ, AAA]4
Manufacturer[NewCo, Acme]2
Order[PO#1]1

The next step is the most critical component of the process to create document registers.
Lets assume the following document codes have been requested for the order

CodeName
A01MRB
B01Quality Manual
C01Safety Manual
D01Drawing
E01Material Test Report
F01Completed Instrument Data Sheet

Our realization is that each document can be associated to a specific rank. In most cases the below applies:

CodeNameLevelQty
A01MRBOrder1
B01Quality ManualManufacturer2
C01Safety ManualManufacturer2
D01DrawingModel4
E01Material Test ReportUnit5
F01Completed Instrument Data SheetTag2

This gives you all POSSIBLE documents required on the order. A total of 16 documents.

Note that another step is often required, to determine which of these 16 documents are required.

If you’d prefer to do this work automatically and want to learn more about how DocBoss can help in this regard, contact us and let us know.