Significant Changes in AS9100 Certification

Review the major modifications made in the revised version of AS9100 Standard. Go through the article to learn more.

The internationally acknowledged standard, AS9100 is specific to the aerospace industry. Recently, this standard has been updated with some changes. These changes are made to reflect the requirements of an evolving marketplace. These changes are made to make to align this standard with ISO 9001 Standard, which was last updated in 2015.

You might be feeling curious to know about the changes. Here, we are going to discuss the major changes made in the revised version of the AS9100 certification.

The updated standard has been updated with renumbered standardized ten elements. AS9100 experts often recommend renumbering an organization’s system in order to help the personnel and external auditors. It would be better if you can provide your auditors and employees with proper training so that they can relate to the updated version without any hassle.

Every company should monitor the internal and external issues. How should an organization detect the issues? These ten issues can be identified by SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). Top management of an organization should have the abilities to demonstrate an in-depth understanding of the issues, which are associated with aerospace management.

An organization needs to document a general description. This description should clearly define who the interested parties are. Interested external parties include customers, regulatory authorities, the parent company, shareholders etc. It is important to pay attention to the requirements of your interested parties. Interests of external parties are of immense importance even for ISO 20000 certification.

The updated version of AS9100 compels the companies to draft a plan for each of the objectives, which describes

• Who is responsible for which tasks?

• How the results should be evaluated once the implementation is done

By arranging an objective program, the top management can help the responsible persons understand the objectives and the roles management is expecting from them.

Along with risk, assessment at contract review or quoting, certified companies should monitor the process risk, corporate risk, and opportunities as well. If you consider ISO 9001:2015, then you would find a great emphasis on risk management. The updated version of the Quality Management Standard has highlighted the importance of a risk-based approach. To keep up with the ISO 9001 standard, the latest version of AS9100 has insisted on the risk-based thinking.

Every company should determine which controls are critical for ensuring the safety of the products and services they are offering. Additionally, they need to train their employees so that the employees can meet the requirements efficiently. Product safety is an essential requirement of AS9100 certification. You should not overlook products safety at any cost.

Employees of an organization should be well aware of the importance of ethical behavior. It would be better if you could have an Ethics Policy. Management must arrange a training program for the employees so that they can get familiar with the ethics policy of the organization.

Management review contains a number of new input requirements including:

• Performance of the external providers

• On-time delivery or punctuality

• The effectiveness of actions 

• Risks and opportunity management

• Addition of new outputs

• Identified risks

An aerospace company should implement a system that demonstrates what knowledge and training are crucial for its personnel. The organization should be driven towards having job descriptions and methods for institutionalizing important and relevant information.

An organization looking for the implementation of AS9100 must have a procedure in place, which includes sampling and analyzing raw materials and parts.

The organization should measure the on-time delivery rate and quality rate for the suppliers.

Since flow down requirements has been expanded including requirements for the suppliers to make their employees aware of the product safety. Moreover, the importance of Ethical Behavior along with the contribution to product or service conformity should also be considered.

An organization must determine the needs for internal and external communication including-

• On what it will communicate

• When it would be better to communicate

• With whom to communicate

• How the communication process should be carried on

• Who should communicate

The new modified standard insists on controlling the changes to the Quality Management System; its processes, planning, production, contracts etc.

There is a new requirement that is found in the Work Environment Section about Human Factors. Even human factors have been added to the production control and corrective action root cause analysis section.

Damon Anderson is a renowned blogger. He has covered a number of niches in his career. ISO and other international standards and certification are his main focus. He loves to write about AS9100 certification. Apart from this, he takes a keen interest in ISO 20000 certification as well. 

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