AS9100 Supplier Approval Requirements

[was named killer]

Performing an Internal Audit to AS9100 and I am going through Suppliers and the AVL. I have discovered where we have been using suppliers that we have not sent a survey or done any sort of Audit on in over Ten Years. Granted, we have been using them and they have been approved the whole 10+ years. My question is this, if we have not had any notable issues withe the Vendor/ Supplier should I be concerned about qualification to an older Standard of AS9100 simply because of the many changes over those 10 years?

 

[outdoorsNW]

Do your internal procedures require a survey or audit?
Do you have evidence for an auditor that an internal review of supplier performance has been performed at least yearly if not more often?

 

[was named killer]

We require a Survey or valid ISO / AS Certificate.

We go track and measure Supplier performance and review yearly in MR.

 

[outdoorsNW]

Since you require a survey or valid cert, do you have evidence the suppliers without a survey or audit have maintained their certification?

How specific is you review of suppliers? Do you review the suppliers that are not meeting performance expectations name by name?

 

[was named killer]

I have to update their Certs to valid now. I just decided that. LOL

 

[Qualityis Key]

WNK - seems like a solid approach to me.
I was just reviewing something along these lines. I am very interested in your opinion. AS9100 8.4.3 (K) states a QMS needs to be implemented. I'm trying to understand what that means. I take it to imply a compliant QMS (to ISO) but am I off base? Our internal requirement is that a supplier needs to have a QMS compliant to ISO. Does that mean compliant to ISO 9001: 1994 is okay?

 

[outdoorsNW]

8.4.3 says in part "The organization shall communicate to external providers its requirement's for:..." and in k it says "The need to ...implement a quality management system." Note the section says the purchasing company sets the requirements, which needs to include any applicable requirements from customers higher up the chain per clauses elsewhere in the standard. Section k does not say supplier "shall have a QMS" or similar, nor does it refer to compliance or certification to a recognized or published standard. So the requirement is whatever the purchasing company (and the purchasing company's customers) flows down to the supplier. If nothing is specified by the purchaser, then nothing specific applies to the supplier. ("Joe inspects everything" is a primitive QMS.)

A company can be compliant, but not certified, to an out of date standard. So based on what you said, compliant to 9001:1994 meets your internal requirement.

 

[Qualityis Key]

8.4.3 says in part "The organization shall communicate to external providers its requirement's for:..." and in k it says "The need to ...implement a quality management system." Note the section says the purchasing company sets the requirements, which needs to include any applicable requirements from customers higher up the chain per clauses elsewhere in the standard. Section k does not say supplier "shall have a QMS" or similar, nor does it refer to compliance or certification to a recognized or published standard. So the requirement is whatever the purchasing company (and the purchasing company's customers) flows down to the supplier. If nothing is specified by the purchaser, then nothing specific applies to the supplier. ("Joe inspects everything" is a primitive QMS.)

A company can be compliant, but not certified, to an out of date standard. So based on what you said, compliant to 9001:1994 meets your internal requirement.

Thank you. I found your response clear and logical with regard to AS9100. I do still take issue with our internal requirement though. Similarly if we said "must be trained to our Quality Manual" and they provided a training record for Rev "A", but Rev "F" is what's current, it would be an issue. Right?

 

[was named killer]

Thanks everybody for your input on this. As to where I am concerned about any auditor actually finding this I do not think it would even be a minor. Simply because our Supplier Quality Goals and Metrics have fare exceeded our Goal each year up until 2019. I issued a CAR to Purchasing and Quality to investigate Root Cause for the 2019 downtrend. Purchasing didn't really come up with anything solid...but after I dove into the Purchasing/ Vendor Qualification Process I discovered this issue.
As to where I KNOW it's most likely NOT the Root Cause I can't help but think it would be a value added activity to get all new Surveys and ISO/ Nadcap and AS Cert status into our system. Even if it just means we wake up some of our Older Vendors to the fact that we actually look at their QMS more than once every ten years...LOL

 

[Kronos147]

One more thing to consider, use OASIS.

All of my suppliers with AS9100 are on my watch list. I can update my ASL records by downloading their certs from OASIS (per our policy).