Posts Tagged ‘AS 9100 Software’
My Customer Wants Us Certified to AS9100, HELP!
You are a small business owner who has just been told you must become certified to AS9100 in order to continue to receive business from your largest customer. You have been putting this off for some time, hoping you would be able to wait until the economy gets better. Now what, you have a deadline and you haven’t got a clue how to get there from here? The best advice, find a competent consultant and get some training to the standard.
Those organizations who recruit good consultants get the job done roughly twice as fast. By helping you avoid mistakes, a good consultant can help you get the job done faster. But only a good consultant can do this. Not all consultants are created equally, and it is important to select a consultant that is right for you. A reputable consultant works hard to ensure that you fully own your quality management system at the time of registration. Key services you will require, if you have no idea what you are doing or how you will do it are as follows:
1. Required documentation development and implementation
2. Training: Quality policy and objectives, Management review, Corrective and Preventive action, Internal auditing, AS9100 Overview, Risk analysis, Overview of the Complete QMS, Collecting and analyzing data.
3. If software is being used to facilitate and run your quality system, you will also need training and implementation services for this.
4. Implementation of a competency, awareness and training program, internal audit, corrective and preventive action programs, management review and overall continual improvement programs.
5. Conduct internal audits for entire system (all processes), one high level internal audit to the AS9101C checklist in preparation for registration audit.
This is just a short list of services that you may need to accomplish your goal of certification to AS9100. Depending on the size and complexity of your organization and processes more may be needed. A good consultant can help you determine your individual needs.
Time Saving, Money Saving ISO 9001, AS 9100 Alternatives
There are now products and services available that make it possible to work together with one or more of your staff online to create and write or revise the necessary procedures that are required by an ISO 9001 or AS 9100 system. Your staff can be at different locations or even at their own desks within your company. There is no need to meet in a conference room, since the conference room is virtual (on the Internet). This approach reduces costs dramatically and results in a better and more efficient working relationship.
First, this technology makes it possible to work at your pace and at your schedule to meet the project’s deadline;
Second, there are no flight, hotel or meal costs! Huge cost reduction;
Third, you can work with your ISO consultant and multiple managers at your facility or at your facilities across the nation in one meeting;
Training is the most important feature of any management system. The better trained the better performance you can expect from your staff. This technology can also make it possible for your ISO 9001 consultant to provide training online to one or many of your employees at the same time. This training can be at your schedule and because the training is performed online, there is no travel, hotel or other expenses.
Guidance for the Use Of Configuration Management
ISO 10007:2003 gives guidance on the use of configuration management within an organization. It is applicable to the support of products from concept to disposal.
It first outlines the responsibilities and authorities before describing the configuration management process that includes configuration management planning, configuration identification, change control, configuration status accounting and configuration audit.
Since ISO 10007:2003 is a guidance document, it is not intended to be used for certification/registration purposes.
This is a great tool when tackling the concept of configuration management, a lot of emphasis is placed on this process in the AS9100 certification standard. Using this document along with the assistance of a business management consultant, can reduce the time it may take to plan and implement this process.
Quality Management Software
With the size and complexity of some supply chains, it is no wonder that organizations struggle with how to implement and control this process. Many small business owners have been asked to provide proof of this control by their customers. The question is, how?
If you are struggling with how to manage your supplier management program there are now software applications that can assist you with this task. For example, CIS Software can eliminate the time and money of issuing Supplier Report cards or Performance Reviews. Watch this YouTube video for some great information on how to better manage this process. CIS Software
AS9100 CLAUSE 6.3 INFRASTRUCTURE
Essence of the clause:
Your company must determine and your business management system must provide for and maintain the infrastructure needed to produce a quality product or service.
Who’s most involved: Management (of almost every department)
Buildings, workspace, equipment, hardware, software, and supporting services must be provided to the extent necessary to produce a quality product or service. These facilities must also be maintained, usually through a preventive maintenance program. (See Clause 7.5.1)
The Goal Of The AS9101 Rewrite
The AS9101 rewrite goal is to provide requirements on process auditing and development of AS9100 series audit approaches and tools that focus not only on conformity, but also on effectiveness of a AS9100 quality management system (QMS). The AS9101 proposal is to develop an enhanced audit process for evaluating process-based management systems that aligns with ISO 17021 and consists of:
• Process-based information gathering.
• Assessment or analysis and audit planning.
• Development of performance-based and process-oriented audit methods and techniques.
• The ability to capture objective evidence of process conformity and effectiveness.
The major proposed changes in the rewrite of AS9101 include:
• Creation of one document covering AS9100, AS9110 and AS9120.
• Elimination of scoring and key requirements designations.
• Use of data and customer feedback concerning organizational QMS performance as an input for process-oriented audits (for example, Online Aerospace Supplier Information System (OASIS) customer satisfaction or performance scores).
• Inclusion of determination of effectiveness, in addition to conformity.
• More emphasis on performance measuring.
• Introduction of the objective evidence record.
A major theme of the AS9101 rewrite is examining process effectiveness. ISO 9000:2005 defines effectiveness as the extent to which planned activities are realized and planned results achieved. The ultimate measure of QMS effectiveness is customer satisfaction.
What has not changed in AS9101 includes determining conformity to the standards, documenting discovered nonconformities and drawing conclusions on conformity of the organization’s QMS based on information collected during the audit.
Essential Changes To The Continual Improvement Of AS9100
The scope was changed from aerospace to aviation, space and defense to recognize that complex systems can include multiple sectors.
The requirement to include quality system requirements imposed by regulatory authorities when developing QMS documentation
Special requirements are those identified by the customer or determined by the organization that has high risks to being achieved
Critical items (for example, functions, parts, software, characteristics and processes) are those having significant effect on product realization and use of the product.
This new requirement requires product conformity and on-time delivery be measured and appropriate actions be taken if planned results are not achieved.
This revision has added a requirement to monitor customer satisfaction data and develop improvement plans that address deficiencies.
Using various business management systems tools can help an organization achieve organizational excellence and satisfy necessary requirements set forth in this new revision of AS9100. AS9100 software as well as AS9100 templates have been developed, that can guide an organization to succeed with meeting this new challenge. Let’s face it, most small business today do not have the resources and cash that the big guy do. These tools are being used as an alternative to high cost consulting services.
AS9100 Root Cause And Corrective Action
Root cause corrective action for nonconformance’s has long been a requirement in theaerospace industry as stated in the AS9100 standard. It is a process of determining the causes that led to a nonconformance or event, and implementing corrective actions to prevent a recurrence of the event. The requirements for corrective action have been imposed on the aerospace industry for decades and while not new, may not have been aggressively enforced.
Corrective action begins with clearly defining the actual problem. While this may seem simple,many recurring nonconformance’s result because the wrong problem was solved, only the result was fixed, or only one problem was corrected when there were really two or more problems. In order to fix a problem, it must be clearly and suitably defined. Frequently, the nonconformance identified is not really the problem, but the symptom of the problem.
The best ways to arrive at the true root cause of a nonconformance is collect and analyze data that will support your conclusions. There are many tools and methods to collect data that can aid in problem identification. Among these tools are software solutions which can collect and graph information for ease of analysis. AS9100 software applications can help your organization clearly and accurately identify the root cause of a problem, so that you can implement corrective action that will resolve and prevent the problem from reoccurring in the future.
AS9100 The Key to Success
The key to success in the aerospace or any industry for that matter lies in its ability to learn on a continuous basis, new and more efficient ways to achieve cost and quality objectives. Only the most advance quality management tools along with the AS9100 standard can get aerospace organizations ready to compete in global marketplace. Our generation must concern itself with bench marking best practices in order to continuously move forward and compete in this market. There are many new software and educational tools available today that can aid in this objective. These tools range in cost from hundreds of thousands which many large companies employ, to products that cost only a few thousand dollars to satisfy the small business entity.
What is most important to the small business organization is time, overall cost and resources to implement and maintain their AS9100 quality management system. If the organization chooses the right AS9100 software package all of these concerns can be met and resolved. CIS Software for instance is easy to implement, requiring only a few days to fully install and begin using.
There are also many AS9100 consultants who offer fully documented AS9100 templates to help kick start your quality management system implementation or streamline that system, if the system you have is way too complicated to maintain.
Business Management software and Document Control
Document management systems can range from a shoebox all the way to a software management system that controls and manages all of the documentation for an organization. There are several common issues that are involved in managing documents, whether the system is an informal, makeshift, paper-based method for one person or if it is a formal, structured, computer enhanced business management software system for many people across multiple offices. Most methods for managing documents address the following areas:
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