AS9100
What the aerospace quality standard actually requires, which records an auditor asks to see, and which of them get kept as the job runs.
AS9100 is the aerospace quality management standard published by SAE International for the International Aerospace Quality Group. It contains ISO 9001 in full and adds aerospace requirements covering configuration management, risk, counterfeit part prevention, product safety, and first article inspection. Certification is granted to an organization by an accredited registrar.
ISO 9001 extended with aerospace requirements for configuration management, risk management, counterfeit part prevention, product safety, and first article inspection.
SAE International and the International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG)
Organizations that design, produce, or service products for aviation, space, and defense, plus the lower-tier suppliers their primes flow the requirement down to. Sibling standards cover maintenance organizations and distributors.
Third-party certification by a registrar accredited under the IAQG scheme, following an on-site audit of the quality management system. The certificate is recorded in the OASIS database, where a prime can look it up. There is no self-declaration route.
Organizations that design, produce, or service aerospace products, and the suppliers flowed down to by primes.
| Requirement | Module | What It Does |
|---|---|---|
| Identification and traceability | Inventory | Receiving records the lot and its mill certification. Every issue to a job preserves the link, and completions assign serial numbers, so a shipped serial resolves backward to the heat lot it came from without anyone maintaining a parallel log. The genealogy is a by-product of the transactions, which is the only version of traceability that survives three years of turnover on the floor. The practical test is a containment question from a prime: which shipped parts touched a suspect heat lot. That becomes a lookup rather than a week of pulling travelers out of a filing cabinet and matching them by hand against receiving logs. |
| Configuration of the as-built part | Engineering | Bills of material and routings are versioned and effective-dated, and a new revision supersedes rather than overwrites. A job closed last quarter still reports the structure and operation sequence it was actually built to. That is configuration management where the auditor needs it: every revision is dated, every superseded version is still readable, and the job itself names which one it ran against. |
| Production process verification | Quality | Inspection templates define the characteristics to check and AQL sampling plans set how many parts get checked. Results are entered against the operation, with the material lot and the routing revision already attached, which turns a first article packet into an export of existing records. The sampling basis, the characteristic, the measured value, and the person who entered it all sit on the same record, so a reviewer can tell a sampled inspection from a hundred percent one without asking anyone. The AS9102 form set reads from those same records, which is what turns a first article packet into an export instead of a week of transcription. |
| Control of nonconforming output | Quality | A failed inspection raises a nonconformance classified by severity, with its disposition recorded against the job and the lot that produced it. Systemic failures escalate into an 8-D corrective action, so the containment, root cause, and verification steps hang off the original defect rather than sitting in a separate spreadsheet nobody opens between audits. |
| Evidence captured where the work happens | Production | Operators clock on to an operation at a shop floor terminal and record quantities, scrap, time, and inspection results at the machine. The quality record and the cost record come from the same entry, so the floor is not filling out a traveler and then a tablet. Every posting carries a Job cost object, which is what makes an audit trail reconcilable later. |
| Externally provided processes and products | Purchasing | A supplier catalog holds the parts and processes each vendor is approved to provide, with purchase orders written against it and receiving tied back to the lot. Because every receipt and every nonconformance carries its vendor, the approved-supplier list and the delivery and quality history behind it come from the same records, so a review cycle reads live data rather than a hand-kept spreadsheet. |
An auditor picks a shipped part and walks it backward. Expect to produce the receipt and mill certification for the material, every job it was issued to, the operations it passed through, and the serial it became. In WorkCell that chain is one query against the genealogy rather than a reconciliation of receiving logs against paper travelers.
Not a stamp on a traveler saying somebody looked. The auditor wants recorded results for the characteristics the inspection plan called out, the sampling basis for how many parts were checked, and who entered them. Inspection templates and AQL plans supply the basis, and operator entries at the terminal supply the results and the attribution. The failure this removes is the common one: a plan calling for ten characteristics and a record showing a single initial in a box. Results entered at the machine while the part is still in the fixture are harder to reconstruct afterward, which is exactly why an auditor trusts them more.
For a part that has revised since, the auditor asks which drawing revision, bill of material, and routing were in effect when the shipped lot ran. Effective-dated versions answer that directly, and because the revision is stamped with who created it and when, the change that moved it is dated evidence rather than a recollection.
The auditor samples open and closed nonconformances and tests whether disposition, containment, root cause, and effectiveness verification were actually completed rather than closed out administratively. Severity-classified nonconformances and 8-D records carry that chain, each attached to the job and lot that generated it, with dates that show how long containment took. Auditors also hunt for repeats, the same defect on the same part number closed three times with three different root causes. Because every nonconformance carries its job and lot, that pattern shows up in a filtered list instead of staying buried across three years of binders.
Every AS9100 audit reaches document revision control, gage calibration status, and operator qualification records. WorkCell gives each of the three an owner: revisions are versioned and effective-dated against the item they belong to, gages and equipment are asset records with meters and maintenance plans behind them, and the workforce module holds the people, their roles and the operations they are cleared to run. An auditor finding a calibration log that nobody owns is a finding, so each of these sits on a record with a name on it.
Does AS9100 require a specific kind of system?
No. AS9100 requires records and control, not a named tool. You can satisfy it with paper, and plenty of certified shops did for years. What an auditor tests is whether the evidence exists, is current, and is traceable to the job that produced it.
Can buying a system make us AS9100 certified?
No software can confer certification. AS9100 certification is granted to your organization by a registrar accredited under the IAQG scheme after an on-site audit, and it is recorded in OASIS. A system can hold the evidence; the program, the people, and the audit remain yours.
What does AS9100 add that ISO 9001 does not have?
AS9100 contains ISO 9001 in full and layers aerospace requirements on top: configuration management, product safety, prevention of counterfeit parts, first article inspection, control of special requirements and key characteristics, and tighter rules for externally provided processes. The ISO 9001 structure underneath stays the same.
How deep does AS9100 traceability have to go?
As deep as the customer flow-down and your own risk assessment require, which in practice usually means raw material lot through finished serial number. WorkCell records the lot at receiving, keeps the link through every issue to a job, and assigns serials at completion, so the genealogy is a query.
Which AS9100 requirements does WorkCell cover?
The record-keeping clauses an auditor spends the day in: traceability from material lot to shipped serial, objective inspection evidence against an AQL plan, severity-classified nonconformances with 8-D corrective action, configuration held as effective-dated bills of material and routings, attributable operator transactions at the terminal, an approved supplier catalog with receipt history behind it, and equipment and people as records in their own right. The program, the procedures, and the registrar audit stay yours.
Is WorkCell itself AS9100 certified?
No. AS9100 certifies organizations that design, produce, or service aerospace products, not the tools they run on, so there is nothing for a vendor to hold. For the vendor-side assurance a prime does ask about, WorkCell runs a SOC 2 programme and will walk your security reviewer through the controls behind it, and its current status, under NDA.
Keep the records as the work happens.
Tell us which AS9100 clauses your last audit flagged and we will tell you straight which records WorkCell would hold and which ones you would still keep elsewhere.