Nadcap
Accreditation for the processes you cannot inspect after the fact, audited to a published checklist and decided by the customers who rely on it.
Nadcap is an industry-managed accreditation program for special processes in the aviation, defense, and space sectors, administered by the Performance Review Institute. Auditors assess a supplier site against published Audit Criteria for that commodity, and the accreditation decision is made by subscriber Task Groups rather than an independent certification body.
Accreditation of special processes where quality cannot be verified by inspecting the finished part, including heat treating, plating, welding, and nondestructive testing.
Performance Review Institute, on behalf of the aerospace industry
Suppliers performing a special process at a named site, accredited process by process, across roughly two dozen commodities. A shop accredited for heat treating is not thereby accredited for welding. Shops that subcontract the process out inherit the obligation to use an accredited source.
Accreditation, not certification. Subscribers define the Audit Criteria, PRI schedules the audit and assigns a qualified auditor, the commodity Task Group reviews the report and the responses to findings, and subscriber companies hold the accreditation decision. Oversight continues through periodic reaudit.
Suppliers performing special processes for aerospace primes, and the shops that subcontract those processes out.
| Requirement | Module | What It Does |
|---|---|---|
| The job audit trail | Production | A Nadcap auditor picks real jobs and traces them end to end, comparing what the paperwork says happened against what the records show. Shop floor terminals capture quantities, scrap, time, and inspection results at the machine as the work runs, each posting stamped with a Job cost object, so the trail an auditor follows is the operating record rather than a packet assembled the week before the audit. That distinction decides most job audits. A shop that reconstructs its evidence for the auditor is showing what it believes happened, and the gaps between belief and record are what the checklist is designed to find. |
| Lot identity through the process | Inventory | Receiving records the material lot and its certification, issues to a job preserve the link, and completions carry lots and serials forward. For a processor, that answers which customer lot was in which load and what it became, which is the question behind most traceability findings. Physical segregation and load identity on the floor remain a procedure you run, not something the system enforces. |
| The routed process the part actually took | Engineering | Routings are versioned with operations and effective dating, so the sequence a lot ran through is recoverable after the routing has since changed. The operation record is the control: it says which steps were planned and which were reported complete. The process specification attaches to the operation it governs at the revision in force, so the lot and the specification it ran to resolve to one record. |
| Inspection and test results | Quality | Inspection templates define what gets checked after the process and AQL sampling plans set how many pieces. Results are recorded against the operation with attribution, which supports the periodic verification the Audit Criteria ask for. The measured values are captured against the characteristic with the gage and the inspector named, so the control chart and the gage study behind them are built from recorded readings rather than from a separate log. |
| Findings closed with a documented root cause | Quality | Nadcap expects root cause and corrective action on every nonconformance, not a repair note. Severity-classified nonconformances carry disposition against the job, and 8-D corrective action records the containment, cause, and verification. What that buys you is a defensible answer when a Task Group reviewer asks what you did about a recurring defect, rather than a repair note and a shrug. Responses to the audit findings themselves are submitted and balloted through eAuditNet, and the 8-D behind each response is already written, dated and attributable before you open the ballot. |
| Accredited outside sources | Purchasing | When the special process is subcontracted, the supplier catalog holds which vendor is approved for which process and purchase orders are written against it, with receiving tied back to the job and lot. The accreditation certificate and its expiry sit on that supplier record, and the delivered quality behind it comes from the receipts and nonconformances already carrying the vendor, so the approved supplier list is a live record your quality group owns rather than a spreadsheet somebody remembers to update. Sending work to a source whose accreditation lapsed last month is a finding on you, not on them. |
The auditor selects jobs and works through them against the checklist: what was ordered, what the planning said, what the operator recorded, what was inspected, and what shipped. Gaps between the planned operation and the reported one are where findings come from. Terminal entries made at the machine close that gap because there is no second transcription step to disagree with.
For heat treat, plating, and coatings the recurring question is which customer material was processed together and under what identity. Receiving lots carried through issues and completions answer it from the transaction history. Your identification and segregation procedure is still the primary control on the floor, and the audit will test it by walking the shop as well as by reading a screen, so the transaction history is the corroboration that the procedure is being followed load after load.
Furnace charts, thermocouple calibration, temperature uniformity surveys, bath chemistry analyses, and system accuracy tests are the heart of most commodity checklists, and none of them are in WorkCell. These stay with your process equipment, your data loggers, and your calibration provider. Any vendor implying an office system covers pyrometry is selling you a finding.
Auditors verify that the person running the process was qualified to the required standard on the date they ran it, working to the current revision of a controlled procedure. Qualification and training sit on the employee record with the operations each person is cleared to run, and the procedure is versioned with effective dating against the operation it governs, so the date the lot ran resolves to both the qualified operator and the revision in force. A Nadcap auditor who finds the qualification matrix in one spreadsheet, the procedure revisions in another, and no owner for either will write that up regardless of how good the production records underneath it look, which is the reason both live on the same records as the work.
A reaudit begins with last cycle's findings and tests whether the corrective actions were effective rather than cosmetic. An 8-D record with containment, root cause, implemented action, and verification gives you something to show, tied to the nonconformance and the job it came from. The submittal and ballot still happen in eAuditNet.
Is Nadcap a certification or an accreditation?
An accreditation. PRI accredits a supplier to perform a specific special process at a specific site, against the Audit Criteria for that commodity. It is not a management system certificate like AS9100, and it is granted per process, so a shop can be accredited for heat treating and not for welding.
Which processes need Nadcap accreditation?
Special processes whose quality cannot be verified by inspecting the finished part. Nadcap runs accreditations across roughly two dozen commodities, including heat treating, chemical processing, nondestructive testing, welding, coatings, materials testing, composites, elastomer seals, and additive manufacturing. Your customer's flow-down decides which ones apply to you.
Who actually decides whether we get accredited?
Subscriber companies do. Task Groups of technical experts from subscribers, PRI staff engineers, and accredited suppliers review the audit report and the responses to findings, and the accreditation decision is made by industry peers rather than an independent certification body. That is the structural difference from AS9100.
Can software make us Nadcap accredited?
No software can confer accreditation. A Nadcap audit is an on-site assessment of a process running on your equipment, by your qualified people, to a written procedure, with calibrated instrumentation. A system can hold the job records an auditor traces through. It cannot pass a pyrometry survey for you.
What does WorkCell do for a Nadcap audit?
It carries the job-audit side the auditor walks: which lot ran which operation on which equipment, the process specification revision in force at the time, the qualified person who ran it, what was inspected and measured, what failed, and the root cause and verification behind the fix. Gages and furnaces are asset records with their own meters and plans, and the approved outside sources sit in the supplier catalog with their accreditation attached.
Do we need Nadcap if we send heat treat outside?
No, but your supplier does, and you own the flow-down. A prime requiring Nadcap for a process expects the accredited source to be on your approved list and named on the part's records. WorkCell's supplier catalog holds which vendor is approved for which process, and the accreditation certificate attaches to that supplier record, so the approved source and the evidence behind its approval sit together.
Keep the records as the work happens.
Tell us which commodity you are audited for and we will tell you straight which parts of the job audit WorkCell would hold and which parts stay with your process equipment and your procedures.