Among other things successful heat treatment depends on the availability of information about material, previous manufacturing processes as well as following manufacturing processes. The basis to accomplish the expected results of heat treatment according to customer requirements, like hardness, is already determined to a large extend by the chemical composition in the steel plant. However, if information about special alloying elements is missing, it may lead unintentionally to failures during the heat treatment. Therefore, with necessary information available it can already be pre-checked if the customer requirements can be achieved during the heat treatment. Information about a previous manufacturing process can be just as important. E.g. remainder of cooling lubricant on workpieces can lead to scrap after a special heat treatment. Information about the manufacturing processes after heat treatment is e.g. relevant if a finishing process follows. So if the information of a following chromium coating process is provided, the annealing process can be adjusted in a way that the performance characteristics correspond to the requirements in the specification. The heat treater should receive the necessary information from the customer voluntarily in order to achieve a win-win situation with a satisfying result for all stakeholders. To point out the necessity of this information and to support the voluntary information sharing, the AWT 25 “Quality assurance in heat treatment” has taken the task to supply the respective reason for the necessary information. Based on the table of the IHT respective “necessary information of the customers of the hardening shop” during placement of an order (http://www.haertetechnik.org) the FA25 has extended this table by additional information considered necessary for heat treatment. This paper presents the state of the realization of this project and shows by practical examples the necessity for passing on information along a process chain.