The Importance of Standards within the IAQG.

The IAQG has 26 standards in place to assist in the quality management of member companies within the aerospace and defense industry.

 We wanted to break down the standards and understand the basics and the importance of these requirements, so we invited Alan Daniels with The Boeing Company to be our guest and expand on this topic. Daniels serves as chair of the requirements for the IAQG and vice president of the AAQG. 

He shares the process of developing a standard, publishing a standard, and the current initiatives in place to refine this process, how often these standards are revised, and the metrics and tracking used to help in this process.

The IAQG is the International Aerospace Quality Group and sets the standard for quality within the worldwide supply chain within the aviation, space, and defense industry. IAQG currently maintains 26 active standards that establish common/shared tools and methods for quality improvement. To learn more, visit https://iaqg.org.  

Transcript

The Quality Horizon – Importance of Standards  

[00:00:00]  

Susan: Hello everyone and welcome. Today I have with me, Alan Daniels, who manages one Global quality management system standards for Boeing and is also the IAQG requirements lead. Welcome to the show, Al.  

Daniels: Thank you very much.  

Susan: So today, what I'd love to do is really talk about standards themselves. What are they and the process behind it? So let's start with a definition. What is a standard?  

Daniels: Standard comes in a lot of different forms, basically it's can be a technical report, something very technical. The on the screws, the gap between the screws. It can be everything from your ATM card is based on a standard, that's the reason you can use it across the world. 

Daniels: ATM machines. That's another standard that you can use across the world.[00:01:00] The initial one going way back was film when we actually before digitization, you had film that you actually put in your camera. It was ISO film. It was based on a standard. So it had very rated requirements where it was ISO 100, 600, 1000, whatever the case may be. 

Daniels: But today we've evolved. There's all kinds of different sectors. In ISO, they have over 18,000 different standards. Of course, we're just focusing on aviation space and defense standards. So those we have 26 today, and they're all based on the quality management system and guidance for the quality management system. 

Daniels: So that's and everything that goes in there is really intended to help organizations improve their quality and build upon a foundation where they can actually move to higher levels of quality and safety of their products and services.  

Susan: So, you said that we have 26 of them. How does a standard start out? [00:02:00] How do, how does that process all begin?  

Daniels: For the Aviation, Space, and Defense for the IAQG International Aerospace Quality Group, we have a process that we utilize. We actually have a proposal process. It goes through a vetting process where everybody gets a chance to look at it, see if they have any use for it, if they like it, and it passes a certain level of voting. Through the various member companies, they have an upvote. We start up a team, and then it's developed from there.  

Susan: And you talked about people and member companies. For those that aren't familiar with the IAQG, what does that mean? Is it global? Is it a key subset of people?  

Daniels: Yeah, the IAQG has three sectors. It's the Americas, Asia Pacific, and of course Europe. And within there, we have voting members. It's trying to be balanced for all the different sectors. They're members from all the top tier aviation, space, and defense companies. Your Boeings, your Airbuses, [00:03:00] your Lockheed Martins, your Mitsubishi, on and on and on. 

Daniels: So it's the who's who, the aviation, space, and defense industry. And they're the ones who actually manage and focus the whole scheme for the quality management system standards worldwide.  

Susan: So it really is a coming together of all minds.  

Daniels: Yes, very inclusive.  

Susan: You have a topic or an area that you want to explore. Take us through the process. So, do you research it? Is it already researched? Do you test things? Is it days long, weeks long, months long in, in rooms where everyone gets together?  

Daniels: It usually takes up to about a year just to get the initial thought process down on paper and we have criteria that we go to. I mean it can't be contractual in nature. It has to apply to everybody from your five person mom and pop shop to your 200,000 mega company. And it can be regulatory in nature, basically generic enough to where all sectors can use it. This is actually [00:04:00] a really unique point because, space has some very unique requirements. 

Daniels: So, say compared to airframe manufacturers for airplanes themselves or defense for the fighter jets and stuff like that. So, you actually have to balance that and make sure that everybody can use it. So that's the goal is to make it so all of our aviation space and defense can use something. It's real tricky balance sometimes. 

Susan: I bet it is. How do you test that? Do you have feedback? Do you have surveys? Do you determine?  

Daniels: Yeah, initially we usually do a survey and then of course we have what we call stakeholder input. So we'll go out to our regulatory agencies, our member companies. Actually, sometimes we'll even go into the what we call the Oasis database, which is where all the certifications are held, and we'll ask that entire database what they think. So we actually try to draw in as much information as we possibly can, because collectively, all those minds are much better than just a small group. [00:05:00] 

Susan: Seems like it's down to a science. 

Daniels: Yeah, a little bit. It's not rocket science, though.  

Susan: You talked about this sometimes can take a year before you even begin for all the research. How long does it really take a standard from ideation to publishing?  

Daniels: This is actually one thing that we're trying to improve. Because it takes too long right now, to be totally honest. It can take up probably three years. From the inception of the idea, it depends how mature the idea is and how much information there's out there in the industry. Additive manufacturing, where they actually build parts, utilizing, injection processes, and that was very new, something that was very complex, and we weren't quite ready to go there. 

Daniels: There's been others that have struggled. We've taken two, two and a half years just to get to the point where we're writing a standard. It was very difficult. But some things we know right off the top of our heads. We can [00:06:00] actually research and pull in all the information that we can across the world. Get experts associated with it. And then within about a year, We're writing. 

Daniels: To answer your question, usually the formulative stage takes up to a year, maybe six months. Writing it itself only takes about a year. And then the publishing piece, the balloting and publishing can take a year. That's where we want to try to streamline it, and we're actually restructuring the IAQG currently, and that's actually one of the things that we're trying to do is streamline all of that and take that to really get a tack time and make it something that's a little bit more efficient. 

Daniels: But at the same time, doing that due diligence, it's great because you actually get a better product. So, it’s kind of a balancing act. You want that better product. And we've seen other standards. It's boy, that's not really written very well. In ours, we meticulously go over and over it, over and over it. Maybe we did too much here. So, it's a balance between the two.  

Susan: So, when it's done [00:07:00] though, it's not done, is it?  

Daniels: No.  

Susan: Once a standard is published.  

Daniels: No, we revise it or have a five year review every five years. We have to look at it to see if it's still relevant. See if people are using it, see if it needs any improvements. See if technology is improved and you need to make some alterations for that. Sometimes we introduce concepts in one revision and then in the next one, we expand upon that concept because you don't want to overwhelm people with something completely new. So once they get used to the idea, then you can expand on it in the next. So that's the strategy we use.  

Susan: And how do you organize all of that? You have 26 standards. Some of them are maybe in process, you might be doing new ones, you may be doing reviews. I know you have a five year review with a big one right now. How does that all get managed so that you stay on top of everything? 

Daniels: Well we have a committee that's their entire role. It's a requirements team. It's actually the full titles Requirements Strategy Stream, which I never really understood what that meant. [00:08:00] But anyway, and that's actually transitioning because now it's going to actually be the IAQG-1 committee. So the whole publishing scheme is changing because now we're going to actually be utilizing the SAE, we're going to be our own publisher. 

Daniels: We're going to be an SDO, which is really cool. So the whole thing is evolving very quickly, but the requirements team manages those 26. We have metrics. We have tracking of when everybody needs to go to their five year review, how they're doing on their five year review, how they're doing on their projects, their revisions, and then of course, helping them and following them through the balloting process and then ultimately publication. 

Daniels: So, it's a, yeah.  

Susan: It's a job.  

Daniels: We have a whole. Or team working on it. They're all volunteers.  

Susan: That's amazing because I've seen your work and it's quite extensive that what you pull out from, or what you put out, I should say from the team. At the end of the day, why do we really need standards? 

Daniels: Actually [00:09:00] it goes back and I'll actually tell you a little story. The inception of the whole scheme of having a quality management system standard. Was because our suppliers and in aviation space and defense, we all use basically the same suppliers or, good portion of them, the same. So your Airbuses, your Boeings, your Lockheed Martins, we're all asking their suppliers to do something a little bit different, they're flowing down their requirements well do it this way, and do it this way, and do it this way. 

Daniels: And it was driving the suppliers nuts and actually it was driving prices up because they had to have 20 different ways of doing the exact same thing. It might have one part, but you have to do paperwork, you know 20 different ways or deliver it 20 different ways. Or maybe that same part would have multiple part numbers and it just didn't make sense. 

Daniels: So this was actually a chance to help the suppliers. And then, therefore, the OEMs help them lower the cost and increase the quality at the same time. [00:10:00] So it gives that visibility, gives the supplier something that we can flow down, so you have to have a quality management system. This is the baseline, the foundational quality management requirements that we need as an industry. 

Daniels: Now, we could have used just ISO 9001, which is just quality management system. But for aviation space and defense, we needed more rigor, more requirements, because they're very complex. You don't have to worry about things at 35, 000 feet. You want to make sure you're on a safe, quality product. That's the reason we started at all.  

Susan: So consistency, quality, advancement, commonality, harmonization.  

Daniels: Harmonization. Ooh, nice buzzword.  

Susan: Nice buzzword. What are some things that are misunderstood about standards? What are some things that we probably should be clarifying to people that don't understand why we have them? 

Daniels: The one thing that's really top of my list is, people think once they have met the [00:11:00] requirements that's the stopping point. They get the certificate, they hang it up on the wall, they have a little picture of party. Oh, we did really good. That's the starting point. And that's where people are losing out. 

Daniels: We have a lot of CEOs and directors at various companies coming back and say, we're not getting the value out of our quality management system. It's not doing what we expected it to do. And then I say what are you doing? They explained blah, blah, blah. We got our certification and go that's the starting point. 

Daniels: I said, what have you done since then? We just wait for the next audit and then we do it again. That's just a pass fail. There's a maturity that goes on beside that, you can actually achieve a lot higher level. And that's where it's supposed to drive you. And it gives you you're supposed to manage your outputs. 

Daniels: It gives you all these different measures, different ways to go about it. If it has a clause for improvement, that's actually where you start getting the benefit. It's not just from getting that certificate that you hang on the wall. [00:12:00] 

Susan: Sounds like AIMM.  

Daniels: Lowe's leading there a little bit, but yeah. Aerospace Improvement Maturity Model, yeah. Because you have your baseline. Yay, we've met compliance. But that's really, if you look at the scale of things, that's really about a level 2, maybe a level 3 out of 5. So you're right in the middle if you get your certificate if you have a good auditor. 

Daniels: So it still leaves a half of that. Where you could actually progress and get from a reactive environment to a proactive environment and where you're not being the victim, you're not firefighting all the time to where you're just, you've got everything under control, you've got metrics, you know what you're doing, everybody is working to the some common Processes and systems and things are flowing well. That's really where you want to get. That's where the value is That's where the money is.  

Susan: So from a supplier's perspective They achieve their audit. They continue to improve at the end of the day. [00:13:00] They've got a better product. You have a better product  

Daniels: Everybody wins  

Susan: And I get to go on an airplane and make sure that I’m going to get from A to B.  

Daniels: Well yeah, or it could be a rocket, that doesn't blow up as you're firing it off the launch pad and stuff like  

Susan: That would not be a good thing to happen. No. Is there anything about the whole process that we haven't touched on that we should have shared, clarified?  

Daniels: The quality management system isn't everything. There are other things out there and that's actually the reason we have 26 standards. Because they tell people or give people guidance on how to improve in certain areas and collectively, I think if you embrace all those things that are important to your company or your service, and this is both products and services, then you can actually really advance where you're at. 

Daniels: And another thing is it's the quality management system itself [00:14:00] is derived to actually create a culture of quality. And it's also a sustainment tool, for sustaining the organization of the, I would venture to say, and I haven't collected data on it, but the companies that really have embraced the quality management system and worked the requirements and matured their requirements are probably really looking and probably survived, say, COVID and other economic downturns and various other things, a lot, probably a lot, I won't say better, but a lot easier than others. So it's really good sustainment tool and a lot of people don't realize that.  

Susan: So, if there are people listening to this podcast today and want to become a part of this, how do they do that? How can they get involved in requirements of the IAQG?  

Daniels: One of the nice new things about her being an SDO is atually, anybody can join. As long as you don't have any ill intent or something like that, but anybody can actually be part of the teams. [00:15:00] You can all you have to do is sign up to the international aerospace quality group and start participating. It helps you if you want to be in leadership positions or in certain committees to be a part of a member company or in the aviation space and defense industry as a whole. 

Daniels: But it's not limited to that. We have regulatory agencies that are part of the IAQG now, along with the new SDO anyway. And they can participate your certification bodies on and on, including, of course, all the member companies. So it's wide open now. Where it wasn't so much in the past. 

Daniels: So the door has been cracked open a little bit to offer those specialists. It's the people that have subject matter experts that really know what they're doing. Really have some input and value to add, not just people that just want to come in and look and listen and see what's going on. 

Susan: So you've alluded to the SDO, but what's on the horizon? What's beyond what we're looking at? What are, where are some of the things [00:16:00] that you might be going in and talking about, maybe?  

Daniels: The big one is we're launching a 9100, which is our flagship standard that revision, this meeting, as a matter of fact. 

Susan: Wow. 1998, right? Didn't I see that somewhere? It's been since, I think that was when it first came out. It  

Daniels: Actually, started before that. It goes clear back to 1990, but that was for the Americas.  

Susan: Ah, yes.  

Daniels: The international one was 1998. Yeah, we're actually launching that Thursday in our General Assembly. And the fun begins. And actually we've got some really, leading edge concepts that you won't see in ISO. You won't see in the automotive standards that they have that are similar. I mean ISO 9001 is our baseline. And they do a fantastic job. It's very generic though. It's certified for what 1,200,000 plus companies or something like that. 

Daniels: The difference with ours, and we don't have as many certifications, but we are mega companies [00:17:00] for the most part. Huge in comparison to say most, the average size of a ISO committee is usually 50 to 500. I'd say the average for the aviation space and defense industry is probably more than 50,000, up to 200,000 plus. 

Daniels: So that's the amount of influence there is that astronomical. And of course the amount of money that's, it's mind boggling. I wish I had more of it.  

Susan: Well you know. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this conversation about standards and standard writings and how they are actually published. This is Susan Matson, and you've been listening to the IAQG Quality Horizon. Until next time, stay safe.  

Daniels: Okay thanks, Susan 

Susan: Thank you