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AS9100 Configuration Management for the Small Machine Shop

AS9100’s requirements for configuration management (CM) are well understood by the massive aerospace primes, but can present overkill and confusion for small downstream suppliers. Fortunately, for the small machine shop, the configuration management requirements can...

Why Auditing “Active Orders” is Terrible Practice

As recently discussed, self-proclaimed ISO 9001 expert David Seear revealed his idea of a "process audit" is to merely select a handful of active orders, chosen during a pre-audit shop floor tour, and then audit those. Unfortunately this practice isn't something...

Process Audits for ISO 9001 Made Blindingly Simple

So many are confused by process auditing, it's become a virus in the industry. Let's inoculate. A process audit shifts the focus from the product to the process, and examines each process' ability to produce a product that meets the requirements for that process. You...

Six Sense Auditing: How Your Eyeballs Fail You During Audits

Vision is great. It helps us to drive our cars, choose our mates, and accurately spear a woolly mammoth for dinner; often in that order, if your date goes well. But when it comes to conducting audits, our eyeballs let us down. They lead us down the wrong path, and...

Top Ten Mistakes ISO 9001 Consultants Make – Part 2

(Part 1 of this article can be found here.) Continuing on the top 10 mistakes made by ISO 9001 consultants, in no particular order: 6.) Training the client to be a consultant. Consultants often don't realize that by teaching clients everything they know (see #5 "Data...

Top Ten Mistakes ISO 9001 Consultants Make – Part 1

This marks the first of a series of "How to Be an Excellent ISO 9001 Consultant" articles; it would equally apply to consultants of other management systems including AS9100, ISO 14001, TS 16949, etc. Here I present some common mistakes that ISO 9001 consultants make...

“Passive” Customer Satisfaction Measurement for ISO 9001

by Christopher Paris VP Operations, Oxebridge Quality Resources When ISO 9001:2000 was released, it introduced a need to gather data on customer satisfaction. This resulted in a flood of "Satisfaction Surveys" being released by ISO 9001 certified organizations to...

Oxebridge Releases DumbAS9100 – A Smartass’ Guide to AS9100

Tampa FL --- Oxebridge has finally followed up its wildly popular Eyesore 9000 parody document with an aerospace version based on AS9100 Rev C, called DumbAS9100. The document is available for free download from the Oxebridge humor page. DumbAS9100 is a 39-page,...

AS9110 B Includes Minor New Requirements, Emphasizes Technical Data

A review by Oxebridge of the new AS9110 Rev. B standard, for aircraft repair stations, reveals that the revised document does include a number of minor new requirements. Below is a list of new or modified requirements in the AS9110 B standard, as compared to the Rev....

New AS rules: Can’t Fire Your Registrar for Bogus Audit Findings

by Christopher Paris SAE finally released AS9104/1, the document which defines some key rules for certification bodies ("CB's, or registrars) when conducting AS9100/AS9110/AS9120 certification audits. Never mind that this rulebook comes a few years after the release...