What documents should aerospace suppliers submit digitally with each shipment?

There is no single universal list that applies to every aerospace shipment. The required digital document package is driven first by the purchase order, drawing and specification flowdown, customer quality clauses, and the part or process risk. If those sources conflict, the contractual requirement usually governs, but many plants also impose receiving and portal-specific submission rules.

That said, aerospace suppliers commonly submit some combination of the following digitally with each shipment:

• Packing list with part number, revision where required, quantity, lot or batch, serial numbers if applicable, and shipment identifiers.
• Certificate of Conformance or equivalent conformance statement tied to the purchase order, part, revision, and shipped quantity.
• Material certifications or mill certs when raw material traceability is required.
• Special process certifications for processes such as heat treat, plating, coating, NDT, welding, or other controlled operations, where applicable.
• Inspection or test results when the customer requires objective evidence beyond a conformance statement.
• FAI-related documentation when the shipment is tied to first article, delta first article, or customer revalidation requirements.
• Lot traceability or serialization records for controlled, critical, or life-limited items.
• Approved deviation, waiver, concession, or MRB disposition documentation if nonconforming product is being shipped under customer authorization.
• Export, handling, or shelf-life information when contractually required, including cure date, expiration date, or controlled data handling constraints.
• ASN or portal-specific shipment data if the customer requires structured transaction data in addition to attached documents.

For many programs, the minimum practical digital package is a packing list, a conformance document, and enough lot or serial traceability to let receiving and quality match the shipment to the PO and the approved manufacturing record. Beyond that, requirements expand quickly for special processes, source inspection, delegated inspection, FAI, raw material control, and defense-related data handling.

What matters most

The documents themselves are only part of the requirement. Customers usually care just as much about whether the digital submission is complete, current, legible, revision-aligned, and traceable to the exact shipped items. Common failure modes include:

• certificate references that do not match the shipped revision or PO line
• missing lot, heat, or serial links
• special process certs that cannot be tied to the delivered parts
• expired approvals or outdated templates
• scanned PDFs that are unreadable or missing signatures where required by procedure
• portal uploads that satisfy file attachment rules but do not provide structured data needed by receiving or ERP

In practice, a shipment can be physically correct and still be held at receiving because the digital evidence package is incomplete or mismatched.

Digital submission does not mean paperless everywhere

Not necessarily. Many aerospace customers accept digital documents, but acceptance method varies by customer and site. Some require supplier portal upload. Some expect ASN data plus attachments. Some still require a paper copy in the box even when digital records are submitted in parallel. Others accept only specific templates or e-signature methods. You have to verify the customer-specific rule set rather than assume that a PDF email attachment is sufficient.

This is also why full replacement strategies often fail in regulated aerospace environments. Suppliers and customers usually operate across mixed ERP, MES, QMS, PLM, and portal stacks with long-lived assets and qualified processes. Replacing everything at once creates qualification burden, validation cost, downtime risk, and traceability gaps. In most brownfield environments, the realistic approach is controlled coexistence: generate the shipment record from existing execution and quality systems, map required fields into the customer-facing format, and maintain version control and audit trail across systems.

What a robust digital shipment package should support

• clear linkage from shipment to PO line, part number, revision, and quantity
• traceability to lot, batch, serial, and process history where required
• controlled document versions and approved templates
• evidence of who generated, reviewed, and released the shipment package
• retrieval during receiving disputes, customer audits, investigations, or recalls
• alignment between attached files and structured transaction data

If your current process cannot reliably produce that package without manual rekeying, spreadsheet stitching, or last-minute document hunting, the risk is not just administrative. It affects dock-to-stock performance, dispute resolution, and confidence in traceability.

So the short answer is: submit the exact digital records required by the customer contract and flowdown, but expect the baseline to include shipment identification, conformance evidence, and traceability records, with material, process, inspection, FAI, or deviation documentation added when applicable.