Mary,
Understand how your company interacts with its customers, suppliers and regulators to understand and fulfill the needs of your customers within the scope of your services and products.
Do this with your top management to determine your company’s mission (it may go beyond customer needs to include other stakeholders) and the processes that are essential to the fulfillment of the mission. Having listed the key processes agree with the TM who best understands each of these processes.
From these sessions you should be able to show what your company does to convert the needs of its customers into cash in the bank (to run the business and invest in improvements). You’ll also be able to describe the interactions of the company with its suppliers and customers and between its key processes.
By determining the key processes you’ll also where the company invests its time and resources in assessing and determining risks that are managed by TM, your colleagues and yourself in fulfilling the mission.
Then study AS9100 some more to determine any missing controls of existing processes and any missing processes from your organization working as a system to fulfill its mission.
You may find lead auditor training useful for honing your skills in questioning, listening and evaluating evidence of control.
Then work with each of the process owners to capture (document) their process and its interactions (search for
SIPOC here). Have PDCA in mind when you do this to capture what is done to prevent problems. Ask the process owners to obtain as-is review comments from those across several functions who make the process work (aka process team) in fulfilling its objectives. Design any missing controls and new processes carefully with the process owner and then ensure training follows for the people to become competent in running the new control or process effectively. Auditing often is an example of a new process.
Ask TM to launch their management system so they show their commitment to it or call this system the teamwork system for wider buy-in - adjust this according to the culture of your company.
Please let us know how you do.
Good luck,
John