AS9100 is solidly established by the aerospace industry. They have invested significant time and effort to craft the assessment and registration schemes around the standard and it is becoming a simple fact of life that if you want to work in the aerospace and defense industries that you need to be AS9100 certified. The industry has restricted access to only the best auditors. You rarely find lazy and ineffective auditors in this scheme. Conversely they are likely to push the limits of AS requirements in getting you to perform effectively. In addition to tough, capable auditors, they have been provided substantially more time for them to complete their audit. Not only are there more audit “days” than a standard ISO audit but it has been mandated that this time should be spent auditing and not report writing. This is going to challenge organizations to get “good”. What we end up with is a highly effective scheme that gives customers a lot of confidence in the ability of organizations with AS. This will strengthen the industry commitment to the scheme which potentially provides a highly profitable market with barriers to entry. A great opportunity for most organizations and forced discipline to improve. However, it is difficult to implement, no corners can be cut and the penalties of getting it wrong are costly.
The standard itself it very sensible but complicated with many detailed requirements and also some general areas that require comprehensive interpretation. Even where you think requirement may not apply you often need to have an approach. Our staff has a keen understanding of the overwhelming task of creating and delivering quality aerospace products, and that a return on one’s investment for becoming AS9100-certified must be worthwhile. The complexity of aerospace products and parts, the verification necessary to qualify those products, and the maintenance of them, is demanding and costly. It is essential that your AS management system minimizes bureaucracy, optimizes value and minimizes cost. We have designed and implemented hundreds of AS systems and have many options and alternatives to ensure you end up with a meaningful system that drives value, is easy to maintain and is also compliant to the standard. We work with your business goals, assuming that you’ve already done a lot of the work to define and operate successful processes. We uniquely make AS requirements conform to what you are doing. We don’t ask you to change to fit with AS.
Not only do we have over 25 years of relevant aerospace and defense consulting experience, we pay close attention to the way you get your product from conception all the way to delivery, helping you implement procedures that achieve a maximum effect in meeting your organization goals and the AS9100 standard. We do all of this with minimal disruption to your production pipeline.