[Update: the parties were apparently successful in getting the referenced video removed; see updates below.]

Man, this is a piece I never wanted to write. I really liked ProShop ERP, the software being sold as a full solution for aerospace machine shops. The thing is a classic MRP, yeah, but it also has the AS9100 modules built in, so you don’t have to buy another program later and try to get them to talk to each other.

I have also enjoyed ProShop rep Paul Van Metre’s LinkedIn posts. This guy is affable and likable and genuinely loves the product he’s selling. He travels all around the country talking to shops and getting his hands dirty on the shop floor. He knows what cutting fluid smells like and probably has aluminum chips in his socks.

But, oh good lord, did ProShop lose their damn minds this week.

Someone’s Doing Speed, Alright

The latest campaign is about how ProShop can get your company insanely fast. Emphasis on “insane.”

Recently, one ProShop ERP client — Novo Modo Machining of Mt. Vernon WA — was able to implement AS9100 in only two weeks, and then got “zero findings” from their CB. And, now — for reasons which make no goddamned sense — ProShop is going to market the shit out of this instead of recognizing it as symbolic of a deeply corrupt certification scheme.

When Van Metre posted about this, I was immediately heartbroken and reminded him that everybody gets “zero findings” because the AS9100 auditor pool is filled with drooling troglodytes. Van Metre backpedaled:

2 weeks was a stretch. And we definitely don’t recommend it. But we wanted to see what could be done. 2 months is a much more realistic and manageable pace – and longer might be better for some companies.

But then, a few hours later, during a webinar, he back-back-pedaled. Repedaled? Unpedaled? I don’t even have a word for it.

Oxebridge Has Entered the Chat

I attended the resulting webinar, titled Breaking Records in AS9100: Achieving Unprecedented Speed & Cost Efficiency, and nearly the entire thing was about the “speed” of the ProShop implementation. Heck, that was in the title.

Van Metre introduced three guests: reps from TAKT Manufacturing, Vanguard Manufacturing, and Novo Modo. The order of the guests was intended to build up to the “two week” climax, with Vanguard going first (12-week implementation), then TAKT (7 weeks), and finally Novo Modo (2 weeks). Interspersed were slides showing land speed record vehicles and lots of hyperbole and metaphors about going “fast.”

There was ZERO ambiguity here: ProShop was selling the “speed” of AS9100 implementation.

Van Metre did make a half-hearted mumble about “this is not a normal or even preferable time frame,” but then introduced the Novo Modo guy and spent the next 15 – 20 minutes or so bragging about the two-week implementation. Then he ran a heartstopping video, complete with pounding music, about the 2-week Novo Modo implementation, complete with Van Metre saying — in the video — “let’s show the industry what is possible.”

 

But scratching the surface, as one does, things started to not smell right.

The Four-Hour Two-Day Audit

Before we got to Novo Modo, we listened to the slowpokes at Vanguard discuss their 12-week implementation. Everything here was fairly normal and didn’t raise any eyebrows. But then the rep from TAKT stepped in to talk about their 7-week implementation, and, good lord, the shit hit the fan.

First, the TAKT rep said, “we didn’t have much change, we were already operating compliant” to AS9100, so the ProShop ERP didn’t have much to do. Which I suspect is true in a healthy number of cases.

But then she said — out loud — that her AS9100 certification body scheduled a two-day AS9100 Stage 2 audit, but the auditor left after only four hours. She bragged about this point (“he was in and out in four hours” — check the video at timestamp 15:00), suggesting this was due to the great QMS she had, utterly oblivious to how many rules were broken. When Van Metre tried to save her, suggesting “there are minimums” (meaning audit day requirements) and that she must have meant the auditor spent the remaining day-and-a-half “chatting,” she just said, “No, he actually physically left.” (Here, at the 21:30 time stamp.) She then said, somewhat begrudgingly, that regardless of the half-day audit, the CB told her she had to “pay for the 2 days.”

Is that even legal? If I do four hours of work, and bill you for 16, isn’t that theft? Shouldn’t someone be calling a lawyer??

And, of course, TAKT received no nonconformities nor a single OFI. Maybe that was because the auditor skipped an entire 12 hours of auditing?

I checked OASIS, and TAKT’s certification body is IAPMO Systems Certification Body out of California. So, good job, SCB — your client just outed you for violating AS accreditation rules.

(I can’t wait to hear the explanations and spin on this one. But everyone in that webinar — which was recorded — heard what she said.)

Later, the TAKT rep said the company won at least one multi-million-dollar OEM contract as a result of the AS9100 they were handed awarded, so they’re working on OEM parts now. After going through a 4-hour AS9100 Stage 2 audit.

Sigh.

I’m sure their quality is fine, but their certificate appears to be as valid as a Harvard degree from Trinidad.

AS9100 in Ten Business Days, Sure, Why Not

The story behind Novo Modo’s “2-week” implementation also displayed problems. The Novo Modo guy bragged that they were intentionally pursuing the fastest possible AS9100 implementation just because no one else had done it, and “I just wanna launch it super fast. I just wanna do something super-cool.” This was in line with Van Metre’s claim they wanted to do a two-week implementation just to “show the industry what is possible.”

Okay, cool, bros! Let’s be fast and cool and who cares if we’re making airplane parts! Now let’s chest-bump!

But then the Novo Modo guy admitted he “practically shut [their] shop down” to get it done. He said he stopped all production, except for two AS9100 jobs, and made the entire team spend the next two weeks to “understand ProShop.”

Check the tape: those words came out of his mouth.

Next, they revealed another card trick. According to the slide, Novo Modo had its Stage 1 on March 5 and then slammed into its Stage 2 on March 7. So, the CB did Stage 1 on a Tuesday and then Stage 2 on Thursday, with only a single workday (Wednesday) padded between them. See, you’re not supposed to do Stage 1 and Stage 2 consecutively, so cute consultants and CBs pretend it’s not consecutive by shoving a Wednesday between them.

The CBs thought about putting rules into ISO 17021-1 to stop this practice, but then pulled back because they realized it might cost them money. But the rules do require certain things be done between Stage 1 and Stage 2, such as updating the Stage 2 audit plan and determining the Stage 2 audit team. But the ABs and IAQG look the other way.

Also, ISO 17021-1 requires that CBs ensure there’s enough time between the stages to allow the client to address any Stage 1 findings:

When a CB schedules Stage 1 and 2 back-to-back, it means they went into the client ahead of time expecting no findings from Stage 1. They just tossed impartiality and objectivity out the window. You can’t know what you will find in Stage 1 until after you do Stage 1.

Oh… the CB used by Novo Modo? You guessed it: IAPMO Systems Certification Body.

Another problem is the fact that the SCB auditor, Don Tate, allowed himself to appear in the “rock music” promotion video, making this claim:

I don’t think I’ve seen any out-of-the-box system that has had such a comprehensive addressing of all the AS9100 requirements.

Here’s the problem: such statements are also prohibited by ISO 17021-1:

Finally, the Novo Modo guy admitted they did not customize any of the ProShop built-in template documents, so he just adjusted his company to suit ProShop. I leave it to you whether that’s a good idea or not.

Sampling, Shmampling

Things didn’t get better when Van Metre himself chimed in. At one point, he talked about how ProShop worked to shrink the gap between Stage 1 and Stage 2, which (again) was something guys like me were doing decades ago. But it comes at great risk. If your client does have a problem at Friday’s Stage 1, it will automatically become a nonconformity on Monday morning. It was also troubling that Van Metre seemed to believe that the consultant (in this case, ProShop) determined the timing between the Stages, and not the CB.

Next, he said ProShop was testing the limits on expected record requirements — which is valid, since the standard doesn’t have any such requirements — but then said you can get through an audit with only “1 or 2 jobs, a couple of work orders. It’s not a dozen jobs, you can do it in just a couple.” Well, there’s no way ProShop can guarantee that, unless they only have friendly CB auditors coming in to gush about their product instead of actually doing a fucking audit. You can’t know how many records an auditor will want, so this is risky talk.

Also, we do have sampling requirements, you know:

But let’s go back. Remember that the NovoModo guy said he “stopped all production” except for a few AS9100 jobs? Well, that’s another neat trick: if you intentionally cripple your own production just prior to the audit — specifically to benefit you during the audit — well, the auditor can’t look at anything other than what you selected. So SCB might have audited only two jobs, sure, but that may have been a 100% sample. The auditor should have asked why they only had two jobs running, and then raised an eyebrow as to whether he was being manipulated. Auditors are supposed to do that. But Auditor Don was probably too busy being distracted by shiny ProShop software.

So, to recap, if you want to do AS9100 in “two weeks,” you just need to follow this handy recipe:

  1. Modify your company’s operations to comply with ProShop, not the other way around.
  2. Shut down your production except for a few hand-picked (easy?) jobs while you implement it.
  3. Have your entire company work on ProShop, and nothing else, for two weeks.
  4. Maybe be partly compliant already, so much of this is moot.
  5. Find a CB willing to schedule Stage 1 and Stage 2 back to back
  6. Find a CB willing only to examine “1 or 2 jobs” instead of actually sampling per ISO 17021-1.
  7. Extra points if you find an auditor who goes home a full day-and-a-half early because he’s a lazy piece of shit.

I’ve Got Caveats, Too

If I sound pissed off, it’s because I am. I was sending companies to ProShop, and now I feel duped. But let me toss in my own set of caveats and try to balance things at least a little bit.

I did check, and other ProShop clients they mentioned were certified by various CBs, and not just SCB. So, there’s no evidence of collusion between ProShop and any single CB. That’s good, but it’s still a red flag that two out of the three “fast” case examples used a CB that appears — based solely on the stuff people in the webinar said out loud — to be ignoring accreditation rules.

Caveat # 2: I should emphasize that none of the companies here should be assumed to have a bad QMS. They all appeared to be sincere folks, and I am confident their technical capabilities are great. They just got roped into a marketing event they probably shouldn’t have. That could happen to anyone.

And, yes, ProShop ERP isn’t terrible. Sure, they still number its procedures based on AS9100 clause numbers like it’s 1989, and they don’t fully understand the process approach (quality objectives and KPIs are the same thing, dude), but there is some amazing shit inside ProShop. (I think they still have a preventive action module!) It’s the best aerospace ERP on the market right now, period.

But by trying to lower the entire industry’s expectations (“we wanted to see what could be done“), they cheapen the entire thing. And, yeah, this is coming from the guy who invented 40-Day Rapid ISO, so I hear your eyes rolling. But I always knew there were limits. I was aggressive, not insane.

Also, read the room, FFS! The aerospace industry is under tremendous—and valid—criticism. Airplanes are turning into open patios with an ocean view mid-flight because some jackwad forgot to put bolts in, and nobody inspected it afterward. This is not the time to cheapen aerospace quality just to sound cool. People are going to get killed.

So, I dunno. Yeah, buy ProShop if you need a great ERP and QMS together, I guess. But I’m not going to be endorsing it much anymore. Because this was just bad, bad marketing and I don’t see how they recover from this.

UPDATE 1: 17 April 2023: ProShop has published the video of the webinar here.

I also updated the article slightly to address the video content and ensure the quotes were accurate.

(See the update below; the video has since been removed.)

UPDATE 2: 17 April 2023: Apparently, ProShop was already marketing this “2 WEEKS” thing as early as April 9 on Facebook. Notice how the post below says they helped their “clients” — plural, as in more than one. I suppose they’d argue that a single company client has multiple employees, and each employee is a client… technically? But it definitely gives the impression that this “2 WEEKS” thing is something they replicated across multiple companies, which is (at this point) patently untrue.  Again, this is more disappointing news.

I think ProShop has drunk their own Kool-Aid for a bit too long.

UPDATE 18 April 2024: It appears the certification body ICPMO SCB was successful in getting the video removed; it’s no longer available. This now hints that the alleged improper auditing was willful, and that they are now covering it up.

To any and all investigators, including IAQG ICOP and ANAB: I have a copy and will send it if you need it. Deleting it accomplishes nothing.

This also puts the various parties in far deeper legal trouble. If it is eventually discovered that SCB issued the certificates based on fraud, then any benefits from those certificates — like OEM or DoD contracts awarded to TAKT or Novo Modo as a result of the AS9100 certificates — would be the product of fraud. Since the parties have been notified of the alleged fraud, they can be seen as complicit in that fraud.

TAKT and Novo Modo must start calling their lawyers and putting pressure on SCB to conduct new audits, without any shortcuts or special breaks, preferably with entirely new auditors. Or they have to get new audits done by an entirely different CB. Because it now appears SCB has put them in grave legal jeopardy, and that any contract they win based on these AS9100 certs is now suspect. These could be challenged by competitors or even investigated by people with scary windbreakers, subpoenas, and zip ties. If the end user of a given product is the DoD, then the charge would be an attempt to defraud the US government, which is a felony.

Caveats: I’m not a lawyer, and all parties are to be considered innocent until proven otherwise. We also can’t be entirely sure who demanded the video be removed, and I doubt Gardner will reveal anything. But it’s a bad look that someone’s first instinct was to remove the evidence, rather than take corrective action.

CORRECTION 22 April, 20-24: I misreported the dates for Novo Modo’s Stage 1 and Stage 2, saying they were separated by a Saturday and Sunday. In fact, Stage 1 was performed on Tuesday, with Stage 2 on the Thursday of the same week, so they were separated by a single day (Wednesday). I have updated the reporting above and the associated graphic.

UPDATE 26 April 2024: the faces of people in the screenshots have been digitally obscured upon the request of ProShop ERP.

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