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What is AS?
Episode 7 2024
What is AS?
In this Quality Hub podcast episode, Xavier Francis interviews Bruce Newman, a Consultant from CORE Business Solutions. Bruce provides insights into AS standards in the aerospace industry, describing AS as an “intensified version of ISO 9001.” Bruce outlines additional requirements such as documentation, quality manual, and stringent traceability.
Core Business Solutions publishes ISO Certification podcast episodes weekly. You can find more episodes here.
Episode 7 Key Content
Hello, everyone, and thanks for listening to the party hub and chatting with some experts. I’m your host, Xavier Francis, and I’m here with Bruce Newman, consultant at CORE Business Solutions. Glad you could join us, Bruce.
Well, I’m glad to be here with you guys. I am looking forward to sharing some information.
Awesome. This week’s podcast is called What Is AS? And we’ll have several podcasts this year entitled What Is Where? We’ll take a newbie approach to several ISO standards for people who need to get their feet wet and understand what a standard is. But before we go in, let’s hear from Bruce as he tells a bit about his experience and journey.
Well, my experience goes back further than I’d like to admit. About 45 years of quality and experience with a variety of standards, a lot of manufacturing experience in my background. Variety of products and services. So, I’m comfortable in any situation when it comes to discussing this particular aerospace, this aerospace standard.
Awesome. Well, you know, I know we have a few people to handle AS, but you’re one of our main guys here at the core. So, let’s just kick it off. So, what is AS and how does it compare to ISO 9001?
Aerospace Standard is basically ISO 9001 on steroids. They’ve taken ISO 9001 and every clause in ISO 9001 applies and then they’ve added some enhancements and embellishments to make it a bit more stringent. One example would be the fact that ISO technically requires no documentation. AS does. They’re required to require you to have a quality manual. There are some prescribed procedures. They require you to have a management representative for the quality system and they’re very they get into a bit more detail about the requirements for safety, ethics, and quality. I guess the other major thing would be that they require some fairly intense traceability.
Okay. And that’s probably due to the fact that this is aerospace, and we want to be able to know what’s going on with parts that might be created. You know, if there are any problems with materials that might have been put in the parts, that type of stuff because we’re dealing with aircraft, spacecraft that might cause a loss of life.
Well, if you’re like me and you fly now and again, you know that if problems happen up in the sky, it’s not like you pull over the side of the road and change tires. It’s going to be something pretty drastic. So, we want everything to be right.
So, a lot of people might ask, is there an ROI? Why is it worth it to get certified with AS 9100 or any of those any of the AS standards?
Well, it’s something that you have to answer individually a as a company. But there are a lot of fairly general returns on investment that you can expect from certification. Some contracts require certification before you can even bid. So that’s one. There is also an opportunity to charge a premium for your products or services based on the fact that you are certified.
You may see some reductions in scrap and rework due to the improvements in processes that one would expect from implementing an AS-based management system and maybe even insurance. Maybe another saving. So, intangibles include just the fact that you could stand out from your competitors as a certified business. And I guess it just shows a commitment to quality because AS certification is not cheap, and it requires resources and commitment from management support. So, there’s that as well.
Okay. So, there are a couple of different standards that are AS. The most familiar were I’m with are 9100 and 9120 I think you’re going to you might touch base on another one but what are the differences between 9100 versus 9120?
So not even 9100 is all all-encompassing as standard and it is used by manufacturing companies. 9120 is strictly for distributors. So that’s just not the start, folks. We buy parts from people, and we sell, and we certify that we use AS techniques in our purchasing processes. So, we vet our vendors, we take good care of the product while it’s in hand, and we can trace it back to the manufacturer, that kind of thing. So, it’s just for distributors.
Do you have to have 9100 to get 9120 or can they be separate?
They can be separate. You can have both, but they can be separate as well. I guess the biggest differences are that AS 9100 is very broad and it covers design, development, and manufacturing. And 9120 focuses on distribution and warehousing. So again, 9100 is basically for manufacturers and service providers. And 9120 is focused on supply chain type.
Okay. So, you sort of mentioned it. By alluding to it. So, if someone is not a manufacturer, which one applies? And I think there’s also an additional one now that you’re going to talk about. Right, as far as an AS standard.
Yeah. So, if you’re not a manufacturer, you would be looking at 9120 for a distribution-type company. There are a lot of companies that sell electronic parts and things like that that are used for aircraft. And a lot of these are AS-certified. There’s another one called 9110 that is strictly for repair and rework stations.
So, there’s a lot of those around, a lot of companies that take aircraft in for refurbishment upgrades. You know, if you fly, you’re flying a lot of old airplanes and you’ve got to have a lot of maintenance work done. And occasionally there’s upgrades to software on the planes, there’s upgrades to different physical components and stuff like brake systems. You know, flaps may need replacement. Those companies are also covered, and they don’t build anything. But what they do is they come in and repair to OEM specification so that that standard is called 9110.
And I’m assuming that with that you also have to, like you said, OEM parts. If they are putting anything in material-wise, they have to work with AS-certified products, I’m assuming.
For certain things. I mean, there are things like nuts and bolts that are fairly generic, just specifications for strength and such for those and size. But yeah, if they’re buying subassemblies or again, like I said, like electronic parts they would want to buy something like that from an AS-certified supplier.
Some people might ask, we don’t really do any aerospace stuff. Why do we need to be certified? What might you do as a business that requires you to be as certified, but doesn’t do anything as far as making or repairing or anything like that?
So, one of the requirements of all the standards is that you have to adhere to customers’ requirements. And there may be a customer requirement for you to be AS certified. And again, like I said, you may not know you’re an aerospace provider, but you might be one. So maybe you’re selling components of some sort of software that could fall under that.
Things like tires, you know, some something that could be used in an aerospace capacity. So, if the company buying from you is telling you they want you to be AS certified, they’re basically protecting themselves in a lot of ways. There are specific requirements in the AS standard that all your vendors have to communicate to them that you expect them to communicate to all their employees the importance of safety, ethical performance, and quality assurance.
So, what you want all their employees to be aware of is that, you know, what they’re doing could impact somebody’s life. So, we don’t want we don’t want anybody to pen a weapon document. We don’t want anybody passing anything that’s not 100% confirmed. So, we want them to be aware of the safety implications of not doing their job correctly.
And so that’s one of the requirements of the standard, is you communicate your expectations to vendors and me, the requirement that you be AS certified. Kind of pushes that on the vendor to then report to their vendors. So, it’s a domino effect going on there that just builds safety up at exponential levels.
So, it could be like you’re telling me a flow down or it could be you’re doing something that does need to be AS certified that you’re not aware of, or maybe you’re just trying to expand into that. He’s all electronic parts, you know, maybe you want to expand into another, another or another area.
There are lots of companies that do this proactively, and the thought being what we’re building is maybe not use that aircraft now, but it could be. So, let’s just prepare for the future and be ready for it. It’s not a huge leap to go from 9001 to AS 9100 typically. So probably makes good business sense.
Okay. So, again, you answered a little bit of this, but what industries apply and why do we need it for government contracting?
Well, there are a lot of government entities that just outright require it. If you’re going to do any repair business for a government aircraft, you’ve got to be AS 9110. If you’re going to do any manufacturing for the government, you’ve got to be an all of the large aerospace, the air carriers, Delta, and everybody, you know, all of them, they all require their suppliers to be AS certified.
And part of the reason is because of the intense quality requirements. You know, as you know, you can’t claim that your product is AS certified. Only your process. But the theory is that, you know, a good process begets a good product. So that’s great. There’s another huge couple of other things, I guess some risk management is a big part of AS. So, there’s a requirement that you take a good hard look at all the risk factors in your process and your products and evaluate them.
Any potential failure modes or actual failure modes that you’ve experienced in the past with your products. Like I said, it forces you to push quality on your own, your supply chain, and you are required to adhere to any regulatory requirements. So, you’ve got to put in some time and figure out what legal requirements might apply to your products and services and make sure that you comply with all of those. continual improvement is a factor. So, and I guess another the biggest one probably is it is a competitive advantage.
Companies that have the AS certification, set themselves apart from those that don’t. And, you know, they qualify where others just do not qualify to even get in the door.
Okay. So, a lot of people might ask, how long does it take as far as get certified in AS? Is it the same as 9001? Is it, you know, different?
That’s a hard question to answer because every company is different. But I’ll say this. I’ve seen it take years. And CORE we’ve got a nice system and we’ve got experienced people to help you. And it can be done in 4 to 6 months without too much grief or too much angst. Now, some people, you know, some people have complex systems, and some people complicate the process a bit, you know. But you know, with some guidance, you can do it in 4 to 6 months. It’s not at all unsurmountable.
Now, I know that there are some new there are changes on the horizon that are coming out with AS possibly a new standard. Do you have any information on that at this point?
Yeah, it’s all just rumblings right now. There’s talk that AS 9100 is going to change to IA 9100. I don’t think there are going to be any huge changes to the standard itself, but that’s a possibility. The system that’s used to track conformance and companies that are certified is called Oasis. That’s an upgrade.
Again, that’s just a database. And then it’s used for information about your air quality system, and such makes you Oasis is nice because everybody that needs an AS-certified company can go in there and find them. They can find the best filter and such. But there are two additional standards 9101 and 9104 that are coming down the pike, probably 9104 is the one that’s going to have the biggest impact on people.
And they’ve talked about implementing it. It’s looking like it might be pushed out a bit. But anyway, just to give you a quick flavor of what’s going to happen. They’re going to calculate audit durations a bit differently than they have. It’ll be based on the size and complexity of the business.
They’re going to eliminate the campus or complex structure designation and just say either single-site or multi-site. There’s going to be more opportunity for remote auditing, which could save some costs up to 50% possibly of your audit could be performed remotely.
Wow. That’s great.
Now, one thing that might be a bit of a pain. A couple of things. They’re going to require two internal audits a year. And currently it’s one. And then the other thing is that before your certification or your surveillance audits 90 days in advance, you’re going to have to submit some information about prior performance and effectiveness.
So, they’ll probably want to look at things like metrics, KPIs, internal audit results and maybe corrective actions. That kind of thing is what I suspect. And I guess the other one is that currently if you’re certified to AS 9100, you’re also certified to ISO 9001 or in the future. The only time that will happen is if you’re ISO 9001 scope and you’re AS 9100 scope or identical.
So, you might have to get both?
Yeah, that can happen.
At some point, they could have their scope changed if they’re, if you have two different scopes.
Yep.
Well, that’s a lot of information. Bruce, is there anything else you can think of that somebody who’s a newbie that’s, you know, just kind of told, hey, maybe they just had something float out to them and say, hey, are you going to be AS 9100 certified? Anything else you could share with them that they might want to know?
What I would say is a lot of people are scared of AS. They just think it’s going to be a tough row to hoe after the compared to ISO 9001. It’s not. It’s it makes a lot of sense, just like ISO 9001 does now. It makes a lot of sense. There’s not a bunch of useless type busywork or documentation that’s required.
Most of the, you know, like I mentioned, the required procedures in the manual. I mean, everybody has a manual anyway, right? The six procedures are. Yeah, they’re common-sense procedures. So, I would say if you have a customer that’s pushing you to get AS certified, or if you see some opportunities in the future to expand your market a bit, call us up and go for it.
Okay. That’s helpful. I appreciate you talking to us today, Bruce. You know, getting us familiar with AS, and appreciate you being here again.
My pleasure. Always, always glad to talk to the people out there.
Absolutely. I want to thank everyone else who’s listened to the podcast today. We hope it’s been informative for you. If you’re looking for more information about core business solutions and how we can help you with a certification like AS, Cybersecurity, or even customized training, please email us at info@thecoresolution.com. You can also visit our website. Like Bruce said at www.thecoresolution.com, And if you haven’t already followed us on your favorite podcast platform, be sure to do so. That way you won’t miss the next quality home that’s released next week. Have a great day everybody.