Skip to content

AS9100 | Aerospace Management

Certify your company with one of the most demanding standards in the aerospace industry.

AS9100 is the international standard for manufacturers and suppliers in the aeronautics, space, and defense industries. With it, your organization demonstrates its commitment to the highest levels of safety, traceability, and quality control.

Aerospace Quality Management System

AS9100 is the quality management system (QMS) standard specific to the aerospace industry. The current version, AS9100 Rev D published in 2016, includes the ISO 9001:2015 standard verbatim and adds supplementary requirements that apply to the aerospace industry.

These supplementary requirements emphasize areas that impact on process and service safety, quality and reliability for aerospace products. It is designed to meet the complex and unique demands of the aerospace industry, from commercial aviation to defense and includes several additional requirements to ISO 9001 that participating aerospace OEM companies felt were necessary to clearly define their expectations for aerospace suppliers.

The requirements within AS9100 are complementary to contractual and applicable regulations. Those implementing a QMS conforming to AS9100 must ensure that the specific requirements of their customers, country aviation regulatory agencies, and local, state and national laws are also referenced within the system's documentation.

Evolution and Importance of AS9100 in the Aerospace Industry

First published in May 1997 by the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) as AS9000, the AS standard has evolved to AS9100:2016 Rev D and is recognized by all major Aerospace OEMs. It combines and harmonizes requirements defined by the SAE and IAQG in the Americas, European, and Asia Pacific Sectors.

The aircraft and aerospace industries have recognized AS9100 as a means for continually improving quality and on-time delivery within their supply chain. Most of the major aircraft engine manufacturers, such as General Electric (GE), Boeing, Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Whitney, are requiring their suppliers to be certified to AS9100.

Benefits of AS9100

  • Incorporates best practices of the aerospace industry
  • Demonstrates your commitment to delivering quality products and services to your customers
  • Aligns your quality management system with the global standard adopted by the aerospace industry
  • Improves your new market / new customer prospects on a worldwide basis
  • For design responsible organizations supports a robust process to meet safety and reliability requirements demanded by the Aerospace industry
  • Improves process consistency and stability
  • Purchasing requires effective controls over the organization’s entire supply chain
  • Product Realization- ensures that each phase of product realization, from planning, procuring, and manufacturing to shipment, is controlled for delivery of product conforming to customer requirements
  • Reduces organizational waste, inefficiencies, and defects
  • Creates independent feedback to foster continual improvement
  • Improves customer satisfaction and increases customer confidence

Frequently asked questions

FAQs

The 9100 series stands for a comprehensive quality management system for manufacturers and suppliers in the aerospace industry. It is based on the well-recognised ISO 9001 standard, augmented with requirements specific to the aerospace industry, for example with regard to operative risk management and document and evidence management. This means that organisations can be certified to a standard of the 9100 series and ISO 9001 at the same time. The standards of the 9100 series correspond from a technical point of view to the standard series AS9100 (USA) and JISQ 9100 (Japan) and can be considered as of absolutely equal value to these.

Based on DIN EN ISO 9001, there are three standards for certification of the following aspects:  

1) EN 9100 for design, development, production, assembly and maintenance

2) EN 9110 for maintenance organisations

3) EN 9120 for aviation, space and defence distributors

Alongside the basic requirements for a quality management system, the 9100 series focusses on the following:

  • Process approach and assessment of the processes using performance indicators
  • Project management, including customer-specific requirements for processes and products
  • Risk management based on analysis and assessment, for example for the introduction of new technologies
  • Greater safety over the entire service life of the product
  • Traceability of all raw materials, general materials, processes, tools and also qualification of the personnel in accordance with customer requirements
  • Definition of safety and function: to agree with the requirements of customers and public authorities

In principle, all organisations in the supply chain of the aerospace industry, from the supplier of individual parts through engineering companies up to engine, component and finished product manufacturers. For suppliers of most of the well-known manufacturers of finished components or products (Original Equipment Manufacturers or OEMs), certification is in fact a must when establishing and maintaining business relationships: in order to gain registration in the international  “Online Aerospace Supplier Information System” (OASIS database) of the International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG), certification is mandatory.

Do you have any questions or comments? Contact us!
* Mandatory fields: We require this information in order to process your comment.

Your contact details