The words behind every record.

DENUE is INEGI’s national directory of business establishments in Mexico. Each entry lists the establishment’s name, address, activity code (SCIAN), staff band and, often, public contact details. Testigo uses DENUE to confirm that a plant is registered at an address, what it makes, and how large it is.

It is the only national, public list of establishments with an address and a staff band.

IMMEX is a Mexican government program that lets authorised companies temporarily import materials and equipment, with import duties and taxes deferred, to manufacture goods for export. The Secretaría de Economía publishes the directory of IMMEX programs and their status on SNICE. An active program is a strong sign of an export manufacturer.

Most export plants that supply US and Canadian customers run under an IMMEX program.

The SAT 69-B list is published by Mexico’s tax authority under Article 69-B of the Federal Tax Code. It names taxpayers presumed to have issued invoices for operations that did not exist, with a status such as presumed, definitive or disproved. Buyers check it to avoid suppliers linked to invoice fraud.

A listed supplier can put your company’s tax deductions and reputation at risk.

SCIAN is Mexico’s version of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). DENUE codes every establishment with a six-digit SCIAN code. Auto parts manufacturing is 3363 and fabricated metal products are 332, the two sectors in Testigo’s pilot. Testigo maps buyer terms such as stamping or machining to these codes.

It is how you find plants by what they make, not by what they call themselves.

The RFC is Mexico’s taxpayer ID, issued by the SAT. It is the most reliable key for matching a company across records, but neither DENUE nor the IMMEX directory publishes it. Testigo therefore matches plants by exact name and postal code, and every record states which method produced the match.

Ask a shortlisted plant for its RFC before you issue a purchase order.

A shelter company is a Mexican entity that runs a manufacturing program, often IMMEX, on behalf of a foreign manufacturer, which produces in Mexico without setting up its own legal entity. A plant under a shelter appears in the IMMEX directory under the shelter’s name, so it will not match by its own name.

A plant with no IMMEX match may still export, through a shelter.

PPAP is the automotive industry’s standard method, published by AIAG, for a supplier to show that its process can make a part to specification at the quoted rate. It ends with a Part Submission Warrant signed by the supplier. Testigo does not replace PPAP; it helps decide which plants to approach first.

Starting PPAP with a plant that fails a registry check wastes weeks.

IATF 16949 is the international quality management standard for automotive production and service parts, built on ISO 9001 and issued by the International Automotive Task Force. Accredited certification bodies grant certificates. Testigo’s registry check does not cover certificates; a certificate needs a hand lookup, dated on its own line.

Most automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers require it of their suppliers.

The Bajío is a manufacturing region in central Mexico. Testigo’s pilot covers four states in and around it: Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Querétaro and San Luis Potosí. INEGI’s DENUE lists 1,363 auto-parts and metal fabrication plants with 11 or more staff across those four states.

It is one of Mexico’s densest clusters of auto-parts plants.

In Spanish, a luz testigo is a dashboard telltale lamp, the light that tells a driver something needs attention. Testigo’s records use lamps the same way: a lit lamp when a check was made and came back clear, amber for an exception, and an unlit lamp for anything not checked.

You can read a whole record at a glance.

A witness mark, or torque stripe, is a line of paint an inspector applies across a tightened fastener and its seat. If the stripe breaks, the joint has moved. Testigo’s logo is a witness mark across the joint of a T, and Testigo Watch works the same way for registry records.

A record is only useful if you can see when it changes.