Defining your Scope of Approval - AS 9100 7.4.1(a)

[Lektrik]

For Process Family... as an example: Your vendor does plating. What kind of plating does s/he do for you company... CAD Plating is a family of the Plating process. So instead of listing "Plating", you'll need to list "CAD Plating".

 

[Lektrik]

Instead of listing "Hardware", you have to be specific as to what kind of hardware, i.e. "Fasteners", or instead of "Paint" = "Epoxy Paint", etc

 

[Mikishots]

We just went through our surveillance audit this week and the auditor described the scope of the approval for us is "approved", "conditional", and "unapproved." So according to our auditor it has nothing to do with what they provide for us, but rather the status of their approval. Hope this doesn't confuse you. My understanding was the same as yours that it should include the descriptions of what they provide to us. Since this was our auditors interpretation that is the way that we have chosen to interpret this as well.

I'd describe those classifications as approval status, not scope. AS9100 clearly differentiates between the two.

 

[Rickser]

JSRDE - we have the same scope. We define what each vendor's status is and what gets them "approved", "conditional" or "disapproved". Haven't gone thru an audfit yet. will see soon though.

 

[AirdrieQPA]

Until you have to change auditors and the new one might know the standard as s/he should.

Great observation, we just had our certification audit to AS9100C and we had the same observation, the AVL was not sufficient in its scope. The approval status was there and we got a pat on the back for that but a foot up the you know what (an audit NCM was the result) for not defining the scope. Our auditor said that the scope could be a code, a narrative or a combo of both but it had to say something like the following,

Honest Frank’s Metal Distributors – all ferrous and non-ferrous metals except for titanium and inconel. (This tells us [our purchasers] what they can supply and what they cannot).

It is the same scope definition we used at Viking Air (builders of the Twin Otter 400) and it passed both the AS9100 auditors work over and Transport Canada.

Does it take work and effort to do this, you bet, the defence company I work with has over five hundred suppliers but I think the effort in the end will be worth it for all parties involved.