Dear Friends

How make the objective evidence for the control of Foreign object damage? as per AS 9100 Rev B.

Regards

Karthi.T

How about using a digital camera. Now you have objective evidence.

Training program and records, inspection instructions, procedures, lack of related defects/rejections, etc.

What the AS9100 standard and your customer are looking for is that your organization has implemented a foreign object detection and prevention program that is appropriate for the product you supply. For very simple products this could be cleaning and packaging requirements. In complex products you may have to have tool accountability, detailed work instructions, Foreign Object Detection (FOD) training programs or even daily walking of the flight deck to remove debris.

If you have damage then it is too late and your FOD program has failed. I would recommend that you look at the clause in 7.5.1 and 7.5.5 of the Standard, the requirements of your customers and any regulatory requirements associated with the product or services your organization will be supplying.

Thanks, Jeff, nice answer........:agree1:

Hi , just my tuppenny's worth.

FOD control is much like Safety, it is the proactive evidence of control that is more important than evidence that FOD has not caused damage to aircraft or equipment. I say like safety because you're not sure whether it was your effective safety management system that prevents accidents or just luck.

You therefore need to demonstrate that you have an effective FOD Control programme by demonstrating effective tool control and accountability, regular clean-ups for work benches, hangars and tarmac, regular FOD training and awareness (part of recurrency training) and ultimately no FOD related damage events.

As James Reason suggests in his numerous books, it is better to monitor the number of safety meetings, safety training events, near miss reports and demonstration of a just culture that ultimately measures how good a safety system is. A good FOD Control system should follow the same process.

Also, FOD is not addressed very well in regulatory requirements, particularly FAA and EASA 145 regulations (just try and find FOD in the regs or the AC's). AS9100 and AS9110 include it as a welcome addition.

Cheers :bigwave:

At my company, we are bound by DCMA 8210.1, and have had to implement and maintain an FOD control program including trend analysis. What we've done is to develop a weekly checklist (completed randomly once a week), and the data from that is input into a simple graph to highlight areas that need improvement. We also have standardized shadowed tool boxes, tool checklists, etc... I would suggest having a look at NAS 412 for a little help getting started. We are a teardown facility, so our FOD control program might not be totally adequate for your operation. I've attached examples of those two documents I was talking about. Hope this helps!