AS Series: Flying The Extra Mile

Issue #1

The new AS91XX series standards have been out for a few years now and many organisations have got to grips with the requirements, meeting the standards and organisations own expectations. However, even though ISO and AS standards are either a pass or fail scenario some businesses just tip over into being compliant and now is the time when you should start to re-evaluate your management systems to determine if you really getting the best value? 

Maturity Models are not new business concepts but are often not used by organisations to determine the maturity of their management system. Using a maturity model can identify if you are one of the organisations who are just tipping over the bar and can help towards excelling and gaining the most out of the system. 

Issue #2

Each standard goes through a cycle of change roughly every 7 years and every other change will be significant, with that in mind we do not expect to see anything radical for another 13 years which is too long for the aerospace industry. Technology and systems change rapidly and management systems get left behind.

When they re-write standards they take industry stakeholders and will ask them what issues they have at the moment, they take these issues and put them into the standards, get all organisations to meet the new requirements and hopefully the problem is solved. The issue with this is that any problems the aerospace sector comes across in the next 13 years won’t get fully resolved until the next release at the earliest.

So how do we solve these issues? 

What has been decided is that the aerospace stakeholders and the IAQG are coming out with additional standards to support the key AS91XX series standards which will build upon those foundations. This will allow them to start specifying certain additional standards into contracts and force the suppliers to abide by those without impacting the AS91XX standards. 

The first round of standards is now being released and these are helping organisations to seek the maturity levels they desire. If you implement the requirements of these standards then you are not just getting over the bar you are exceeding the bar and creating culture which sets you apart from the rest. 

Although you may feel that getting over the bar is enough from our experience when organisations fully embrace the management systems and strive for excellence they are far more robust as an organisation. The culture is different, the growth can be dramatic, the staff turnover is minimal and the controls in place become best practice.

How NQA will support you

To help organisations in the endeavour for excellence and maturity we will be releasing a series of articles over 2020 which cover these standards:

• Part 1 - ARP9136: Root Cause Analysis and Problem Solving (9S Methodology)

• Part 2 - AS9145: Advanced Product Quality Planning

• Part 3 - AS9116: Notice of Change (NOC) Requirements

• Part 4 - AS9117: Delegated Product Release Verification

• Part 5 - AS9138: Quality Management Systems Statistical Product Acceptance Requirements

• Part 6 - ARP9137: Guidance for the Application of AQAP 2110 within a 9100 Quality Management System