AS9100 Audit

So we had an AS9100 audit a couple weeks ago and our auditor wrote an NCR for Supplier Re-Evaluation. For a vendor to get on our AVL they either have to have an ISO cert or complete a desk audit on their QMS and signed off by our Quality Manager. For their yearly re-evaluation to stay on our AVL we monitor their OTD and Quality performance of shipments received. The auditor said this is an NCR because for the re-evaluation of suppliers on the AVL we need to certify their ISO certs or conduct a new desk audit. We are contract manufacturing so our AVL contains about 400 vendors and we are a small company of about 50 people. We do not have the staff to keep up on ISO certs and we have been through 4 previous AS9100 audits and no auditor has mentioned we are not in conformance. We applied for an appeal and it was denied by our registrar. Any thoughts?

 

You may want to post the actual finding so people can comment.

I don’t know the specifics of the AS standard and I’m not sure about an annual review that extensive, but you should have a way of monitoring the ISO/AS certs of your vendors. They have an expiration date every three years, so it seems to me if you get their new certs at that time it should be sufficient. Same with the desk audit — seems like you could do that on an extended schedule as well. No way you’re doing that annually on 400 suppliers.

And do you really have 400 relevant suppliers or are you including a lot of non qms related suppliers?

 

As Andy said above the requirement is that you have an assessment but the actual process is down to you. So the auditors cannot raise an NC on your way of doing it unless it’s demonstrably insufficient or you are not following your own rules.

It is not clear from your OP whether that is the case.

Personally I’d interpret what you wrote as; some kind of certification is required for registration and so you should have a process to check that they have maintained their accreditation. With 400 suppliers that’s a lot so you obviously need a strategy for that; maybe winnow them down, make a few dormant that can be reactivated by providing their certifications next time you ask for a quote, and for the active accounts you could group them into batches and mass email them once per quarter saying your certifications are about to/just expire(d) please send new ones to us to maintain approval.

good luck