Ask HN: Where does operational truth live before it reaches "systems of record"?

I’m trying to pressure-test a pattern I keep seeing in industrial and asset-heavy operations, and I’d value perspectives from people who’ve lived this.

In many environments (manufacturing, equipment rental, oilfield services, aerospace, medical devices), quality and ops work often starts outside formal systems: - inspection notes written by hand - photos on phones - voice notes from the field - emails and spreadsheets coordinating fixes

ERP/QMS systems exist, but under time pressure the work happens elsewhere first. When an audit, customer escalation, or safety question hits, teams scramble to reconstruct what actually happened from scattered artifacts.

A few questions I’m genuinely curious about: - Have you seen environments where this doesn’t happen? What made them different? - Where does reconstruction pain show up the most — audits, customer disputes, asset recertification, something else? - What information tends to get lost when work is summarized or normalized too early? - Who usually carries the burden of “proving” things are fine when something escalates?

I’m not selling anything or looking to promote a tool. I am just trying to understand where reality breaks abstraction in practice.

Would appreciate any firsthand experiences or counterexamples.