AS9116 can be a standalone requirement or an additional requirement to AS9100D, AS9110 (Aviation Maintenance Organizations) or AS9120 (Aviation, Space and Defense Distributors). It does not apply to ‘build to print’ contracts.
Source Control Drawings, Bills of Material, Manufacturing methods and Key components must be considered for their NOC status, i.e., design characteristics and performance requirements to the lowest levels in the supply chain.
The prequalification contract stage and all other contract review stages (which should be frequent) will need careful monitoring, with sufficient root cause analysis of nonconformances.
Thorough verification will be required at each design phase, such as Preliminary Design Reviews and Design Review Dispositions, before deciding whether or not an NOC is necessary and who needs to approve, for example:
- Changes that the customer must accept before implementation,
- Changes that may require customer acceptance before implementation
- Changes implemented concurrently with notifying the customer that acceptance is required.
So where should design approval representatives concentrate verification resources? I suggest start with the RFQ and its relation to the design history of current and previous contracts.
If a new contract emerges:
- identify at which level in the design NOCs are (or might be) required;
- by whose authority and responsibility they will be issued;
- resources involved (including supply chain);
- check current status of Master Document List (revision status of design documents);
- identify, establish and verify baseline configurations with the customer, with design change authorisation levels.
Bear in mind that Standards Boards are rejecting recommendations for certification where they consider that Nonconformance Reports with insufficient root cause analysis.have been signed off by Certification Boards.
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