If you ever decided to go out for a quality meal, you first pick a restaurant that has been described by others as having great food and service. Each of those two ingredients was well planned and executed which resulted in a positive experience. Sometimes you feel like a great meal sometimes you don’t. We often try to eat healthy but are willing to throw caution to the wind in the heat of convenience or hast. Well let’s say you always want a good meal but aren’t willing to pay for it. After all at the end of the day it’s just another meal. So what does this have to do with Aerospace electronics? Well nothing unless the poor standards practiced by the Chinese companies that were ISO 9001 certified are now killing our pets and contaminating the food chain that humans are consuming.
We have not begun to count human lives lost. We all learned about aerospace components and what kind of o-rings NASA had used on the Challenger. The loss of life and the ramifications it had to the future of space travel are more than just a bad dining experience. Most of us have been on a jet. There are procedures and routine preventative maintenance that is planned and executed to provide you a safe and positive experience. ESCS understands mil spec
A bad airline experience quickly and publicly takes human lives. It is not forgotten like a bad meal. The lesson learned is improved procedures as well as proactive measurement of all products and suppliers can safeguard that history does not repeat it self. The definition of isanity is "to repeat the same action over and over and expect a different result."
The Aerospace industry by its nature has to hold itself to a higher standard!
For years many factories have embraced the idea of quality with ISO 9001 however this quality management system falls short of the requirements needed to protect human life.
The Aerospace industry created an
AS9100 standard for manufacturers,
AS9120 for distributors, and
AS9110 for repair and over haul facilities. This standard was built on the foundation of the International Standards Organization ISO9001 however over 100 added requirements are demanded by the Aerospace AS9100 standard to ensure a safe and positive experience.
The AS9120 standard mandates that you identify an approved supplier data base.
1.) You must identify the scope of what you buy.
2.) You must keep a matrix on the number of orders, how many on-time deliveries and how many quality issues for each supplier.
3.) All lot codes are documented. Any split lot codes must be documented for 7 years.
AS9100 requires not only that you check what you are doing but that you are proactively measuring the practices and procedures you follow will achieve an improved predicted goal.
In contrast ISO9001 certified companies are not required to measure their suppliers the same way, nor are they required to keep track of date codes or a split lot of material.
Wouldn’t you like to know that the aerospace companies and the companies that support them are mandated to identify quality companies who perform, keep track of how old those o-rings were and what other companies they were sent to! If the companies were not AS9100 certified, we may never know! Buying because it is cheap or purchasing from a supplier who buys surplus lots that are not required to have any quality control systems in place is no longer an option! Some resellers go so far as to state they are ISO9001 compliant. According to whom! Buying a box of documents and crossing out the word company and replacing it with your company name some could say makes you compliant but only to the one who sold you the make believe quality system.
You don’t buy a certification. It’s like a college diploma, you learn it, earn it, and practice it, prefect it and it becomes part of who you are. Being compliant is like a high school student saying I have read some of the books Wharton school of Business graduates have used in their education.
DO PLAN CHECK is the Aerospace "credo"Which of the 3C’s should represent your current supplier’s quality management system?
Complacent, Compliant, or CertifiedWhat subjective evidence have you demanded of your suppliers that demonstrate they will provide a Q.M.S that is protecting your supply chain to
combat counterfeits?
Want to learn how not to Shave Aerospace Quality on Electronic components?
Visit
www.combatcounterfeits.com/ or
www.escs9120.com/ to learn more!
