How this was built
Methodology
What the badges mean, what this atlas will not do, and where it is weakest. If you are going to rely on it, read this first.
What the confidence badges mean
Every capability claim carries one. They are not decoration.
| Badge | Means | Source | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Verified | The company says so itself | Its own website | 604 (50%) |
| Reported | A credible third party says so | Trade press, government release, directory | 570 (47%) |
| Inferred | Consistent with what the company does, but unconfirmed | None reached | 32 (3%) |
Empty is a real answer
A field left blank means nobody confirmed it, not that the answer is no. A company with no AS9100 badge may well hold AS9100. It just was not published where it could be checked. The same applies to melt country, size envelope and every certification. Blank means unverified, never false.
The build refuses to emit a page for a form or process with no suppliers on file, so an empty page never renders. Where a capability is genuinely missing, the supply chain diagram says so on the step itself rather than leaving a silent gap: a dashed red box means domestic capability was looked for and is absent, and a faint dashed box means no supplier has been identified yet. Hover any unlinked step to see which.
How capability claims are stored
Capability lives in exactly one place: an edge that names a company, a material and a form or process. Company records carry no supplier claims and vocabulary files carry no company lists. Both directions are derived at build time, so the two halves cannot drift apart and disagree. Adding a material requires new JSON and no code changes.
Every reference is validated on build. An edge pointing at a company, material, form or process that does not exist fails the build rather than rendering a broken page.
Freshness
Every record carries the date it was last verified. The build warns when anything passes 183 days unverified, because the real risk to a reference like this is not being wrong today. It is being wrong in eighteen months and looking equally authoritative.
That is not hypothetical. Three of six ceramic processing vendors turned out to have the wrong city recorded after roughly two months unverified, and one had been described as doing a fundamentally different process than it actually does.
Records currently past the staleness threshold: 0 · oldest verification on file: 2026-07-27
What this atlas will not tell you
Deliberate exclusions, not oversights.
- Lead times. They change weekly and cannot be verified from outside.
- Prices or rates. Same reason, and they are commercially sensitive.
- Capacity available to you. Whether a supplier can take your work depends on their backlog and your programme, neither of which is public.
- Approved source list status. Fastener and casting qualification runs per part number against an airframer's list, not per company.
- Whether a supplier is any good. This records what exists, not who performs.
Use it as a research aid
This atlas is built to shorten the list you have to investigate, and to tell you when the list is shorter than you expected. It is not a substitute for supplier qualification, a site visit, or reading the actual certification scope. A Verified badge means a company published a claim about itself. It does not mean anyone audited it.