SimpleQuE Attends NQA Teaming Conference

By Blake Russell

The SimpleQuE team of Jim Lee, Deanne Sparr, Shirley Kennedy, and I attended the NQA Teaming Conference in Warwick, RI held August 15-17, 2016. 

As an aerospace consultant, this was a great conference due to the knowledge transfer from NQA’s AS experts.  Whether covering ISO, AS or TS having an insight into the perspective of a globally recognized certification body such as NQA, is extremely valuable to us and to our clients.    

The Aerospace 2016 session lasted a full day to cover the AS updates. The topics reviewed were auditor awareness of 3^rd party rules and regulations, the OASIS Next Gen forthcoming, ANAB lessons learned in findings (NQA), RMC workshop updates, and the timeline and changes for the AS91XX:2016 Standard(s). 

Some of the key takeaways from this meeting were the following:

1. Supplemental Rule 003 (SR003) draft is the roadmap for transitioning from AS 9100C to AS9100D that is in sync with the new ISO 9001: 2015. The final draft and release of SR003 should be by December 2016.
2. The planned timelines for the release of the new Aerospace Standard revisions are as follows:
   1. AS9100 – September 20, 2016
   2. AS9110 / AS9101 – November 2016
   3. AS9120 – October 2016
3. All future registrar audits must be to the latest revision of AS9100/9110/9120 following AS9101:2016 as of June 2017.
4. The final transition audit deadline for the AS9100D series is June 15, 2018. Transition to the latest revisions of AS 9100/9110/9120 must be completed as of September 2018 when AS9100C certifications become invalid.
5. It was noted that 95% of certified companies wait until the last possible year before upgrading to a new standard before the old one expires.  The reason the aerospace industry is accelerating the upgrade timing is due to the risk of availability of certification body auditors since upgrade and recertification audits take more time and too many standards will require upgrade by September 2018. If a company can’t get recertified or transitioned to the new standards by then, the company would lapse their certification and need to start certification from scratch with significantly more audit days and cost.

I hope this was informative and brought some insight as to what is coming for the Aerospace certified companies.  simpleQue is ready to assist with training, consulting and internal auditing to prepare ISO, TS and AS certified companies for the transitions.