A question for the ETSO manufacturer out there: how do you maintain and "make compatible" the living dataset that corresponds to your ETSO Authorizations?
Every installer, every TC or STC holder who specifies your part, and every one of your own future design changes will need to "interface" to that data; and I imagine that the ETSO manufacturer needs to maintain that data and a record of such interfaces for as long as that design family stays in service.
Treated as a certificate, an ETSO authorisation is a PDF in a folder; done, filed, moved on from. Treated as a dataset, it's the substantiation, test evidence, and applicable standard revision behind every claim an installer will eventually make about your part, available on demand, years after the original engineers have moved on.
The difference shows up the first time an installer asks a question your original team could have answered instantly and your current team can't answer at all without weeks of archive work.
Equipment manufacturers who get this right stop thinking of ETSO as a one-off deliverable and start maintaining it the way they'd maintain any other long-lived asset.
Is your ETSO evidence still queryable today the way it was the week you got the authorisation? Which software solutions do you use to achieve this queryability?
Do let us know! We are convinced that CIVIRES can support this process too! - https://www.civires.com/contact