AS9100 — Aerospace Quality

What does AS9100D require beyond ISO 9001?

AS9100D follows the same ten-clause structure as ISO 9001:2015 and adds aerospace requirements within it. The additions reflect what goes wrong in aerospace supply chains: parts built to the wrong revision, suspect parts entering stock, debris left in assemblies and late deliveries that hold up a build. These are the areas an aerospace auditor tests that an ISO 9001 audit does not.

AS9100, AS9110 or AS9120: which standard fits your business?

The IAQG publishes a family of standards, and choosing the wrong one wastes an audit cycle. AS9100 covers organizations that design and manufacture aviation, space and defense products, which takes in machine shops, sheet metal and composite fabricators, special-process suppliers and assemblers. AS9110 is written for maintenance, repair and overhaul organizations, and AS9120 for distributors that buy and resell parts without altering them.

Organizations that design, develop or produce deliverable software can add AS9115, which supplements AS9100 for software. The Aerospace & Defence industry page covers which standards each kind of supplier tends to be asked for.

AS9100 certification also does not cover security obligations. If your work involves examining, possessing or transferring controlled goods, you must register with Canada's Controlled Goods Program, administered by Public Services and Procurement Canada. That registration is separate from your quality certificate, and a defense contract may require both.

How long does AS9100 certification take in Canada?

For a shop that already runs a working ISO 9001 system, AS9100 certification typically takes six to nine months. A shop starting without a certified system should plan for nine to twelve months or more. The six-stage certification process shows where that time goes.

The audit itself follows rules set for the aerospace scheme. Certification bodies audit to AS9101, which defines how aerospace audits are conducted and reported, under the certification requirements in AS9104/1. Expect a Stage 1 audit of readiness and documentation, a Stage 2 audit of implementation and an auditor who follows real part numbers through contract review, purchasing, production and inspection.

Duration and cost depend on headcount, the number of sites, whether you hold design responsibility, how many special processes you run in-house and how much of the aerospace-specific system already exists. Once certified, you are entered in OASIS, and surveillance audits keep the certificate active through its three-year cycle.

Where do AS9100 audits commonly find nonconformities?

Findings in a first AS9100 audit tend to cluster where aerospace requirements meet daily habits on the floor. Configuration control is a common one: a traveler references a superseded drawing revision, or a customer's engineering change reached purchasing but not the machine. Controlled documents that carry their full revision history, as they do in the software's document control, make that trail easier to prove.

Other recurring findings include first article records that were not repeated after a process or tooling change, counterfeit-part controls written into a procedure but not applied at receiving, and corrective actions that blame the operator without examining human factors. Flow-down is another: requirements on your customer's purchase order have to reach your own suppliers, including special-process houses. A free readiness check shows which of these gaps apply to your shop.