Do you suffer from any of the following Quality Inspection Nightmares?
Each Customer has a Unique AS9102 Form – One customer wants you to enter inspection data directly into their web-based screens; a second customer requires the actuals to be entered in their specific Excel format; meanwhile a third customer insists you load the characteristic requirements into their proprietary online system.
FAI Reports are Time Consuming – If you regard your FAI documentation as just another report imposed on you without any internal benefit, you may be missing some quality inspection opportunities. Many suppliers spend hours and days just entering tons of data without realizing any real benefit for their own quality needs. For many companies the FAI is just a costly burden that is necessary to meet customer demands and nothing more.
Scrap and Rejects are Reducing Profitability – Many factors may play into your scrap nightmare: wrong or misread tolerances, incorrect materials, and in precise measurements. These non-conformance nightmares will cost you plenty. It’s the call from your customer, or the news from the shop floor no one wants to get: “The part doesn’t fit.” The amount of time and effort for a redo is a tremendous drain and distraction.
Unprepared for Emerging 3D Model Requirements – Today aerospace suppliers must deal with a mix of technical data formats required by their customers. For example, some aerospace prime contractors are only sharing dimensionless 3D CAD models with their suppliers for their new programs. Others only provide drawings as PDF or Tiff files. Adding another wrinkle to this media mix, 3D data types are numerous and varied, and the modeling software is expensive for each model type. To be competitive, companies must have the flexibility and a single software tool to deal with these varied formats and customer demands.
Failure to Define Standardized Inspection Criteria – Suppliers in the aerospace industry rely heavily on their operators to interpret the internal processes for part creation, but often times these operators are provided a set of work instructions without a control plan. Without a control plan, the operator does not have the complete picture for managing and inspecting the discrete characteristics of the part. These results in an inconsistency of planning and can create problems in the part production. As a result, scrap is created, which is costly and downright wasteful.