LinkedIn Debate: “Should AS9100 Auditors Judge QMS Effectiveness?”

A debated on LinkedIn.com has been launched to discuss whether AS9100 registration auditors should merely determine a company’s conformity to the AS9100 standard, or whether they should also judge the effectiveness of the QMS and its processes.

Per the revised AS9101D approach, the IAQG has now given a mandate for AS auditors to “determine effectiveness” of a client company’s aerospace QMS. When the idea of QMS certification was first launched, ISO 9001 was sold as a “standard” against which a company was assessed for conformance. “Marketing creep” by registrars, necessitated by the free market, led to CB’s expanding the scope of their mandate into “value added auditing” and offering “improvement” services. That was done outside of the general scope of their accreditation.

Now, the IAQG has hard-coded the role of “effectiveness judge” on the AS auditors, under pressure from aero primes and IAQG members who were frustrated with continuing poor quality being produced by AS9100 registered companies. Rather than examine the standard or accreditation, they opted to use aerospace auditors as roving effectiveness assessors.

Now, a company can feasibly implement every clause of the AS9100 standard, and still be met with registration nonconformities if the individual auditor feels a process is not effectiveness. The PEAR form attempts to reduce subjectivity in this practice.

What do you think about this shift? Do you prefer if aerospace auditors simply judge whether a company complies with the AS9100 standard or not, or do you want auditors to judge the effectiveness of the system as well?

Join the conversation on LinkedIn’s Americas Aerospace Quality Group (AAQG) page, here.