Insights into the 9100 Series

In this episode of The Quality Horizon, we’re joined by Alan Daniels and Buddy Cressionnie to talk about the 9100 series standard.

The podcast focuses on key insights into the ongoing development and revisions of the 9100 series. 

Highlights involve the collaborative efforts, key changes, and tools available to organizations such as AIMM. 

They highlight the shift towards a single Standards Developer Organization (SDO) for 9100 to streamline the standard development process. They also note that the 9100 team is actively collaborating with ISO Technical Committee 176, which develops ISO 9001.

Listen in for the latest update.

More About our Guests

Alan Daniels 

·      Manages the Global Quality Management System standard for The Boeing Company

·      IAQG Standard Management Committee Chair

·      International lead for the 9100 team

·      Active on the ISO international committee TC 176 which develops the ISO 9001

Buddy Cressionnie

·      Americas Sector lead for the 9100 team

·      Active on the ISO international committee TC 176 which develops the ISO 9001

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 - IA9100 Series

Susan: [00:00:00] Greetings, everyone, and welcome. I'm your host, Susan Matsuda, and with me today are Alan Daniels and Buddy Cressionnie. Alan manages the global quality management system standard for the Boeing Company, and he's also the IAQG Standard Management Committee Chair, as well as the International Lead for the 9100 team. Buddy is the Americas Sector Lead for the 9100 team, and both are active on the ISO International Committee TC 176, which develops the ISO 9001. Gentlemen, welcome to the show. 

Buddy: Thank you. very much. 

Susan: Thank you for joining us. 2023 has been a big year for the IAQG, but one of the projects that many people are paying attention to is the 9 100 series. [00:01:00] So with your help today, I'd like to give our listeners an opportunity to hear what's happening in that world. So hopefully we can just jump right on in. How about it guys? 

Alan: Okay. Sounds good. That's great. 

Susan: Perfect. So for our listeners who may not necessarily know exactly how the whole series works, Alan, can you give us just a quick background on the 9100 series and its function within the IAQG. 

Alan: Yeah, I can, Susan. The 9100, of course, is the flagship of the International Aerospace Quality Group, the IAQG. But with that, we have for maintenance organizations, the 9110. And for distributor organizations, we have the 9120.

Alan: Now, we all use ISO 9001 as our baseline. That's actually for dual certification purposes. If a supplier gets flowed down requirements for, say, ISO 9001 and also AS 9100, it gives them an easy way [00:02:00] to be certified to both. So that's the reason we follow the scheme 9110 and 9120 for maintenance and distribution actually use 9100 as their baseline.

Alan: So it actually makes it very cohesive to where we actually have a very nice flow throughout the aviation space and defense or whole industry. And we actually have those requirements aligned to some degree. They'll have unique requirements. They might not have other requirements. They might take some out.

Alan: They might add some. But that's the way the scheme actually works. But we also have 9115, which actually is the software deliverable software standard. And it actually talks about how to apply 9100 in a software environment. The software is a product. And then we have the 9101, which is still part of the series. And it's actually the auditing standard. So it's those combined that make up the series. [00:03:00]

Susan: Thank you. Thank you for that. Buddy. Can you give us a quick kind of status? Where are we today with some of these changes and revisions are coming up? 

Buddy: Both ISO 9001 as well as the standards have a 5 year review plan. For the 9100 series we released in 2016. We started the activity actually five years after that, in 2021 we've been busy conducting surveys, for example, of some of our key stakeholders, including member companies regulatory agencies to our relationship growth teams through our other IAQG standards.

Buddy: And that gave us the information of where to go launch with regards to what changes to go make with regards to the standards. So we've been busy. We have teams that have also been established, not only at the international level, but also at the sector level. So I'm pleased to say that I have about a team of about [00:04:00] 25 people here in the Americas made up of all different stakeholders from member companies to regulatory agencies, small disadvantage, certification bodies, FAA, DCMA, NASA, and I have to say my colleagues in Europe and Asia have done the same thing. So we have a large team and right now we're working through that activity. With the plans of developing a coordination draft and issuing that in the November timeframe of this year after we have a chance to review that at our IAQG meeting in October. 

Susan: Okay November things are going to happen in person. We're that will be in San Francisco in California, where everyone will be getting together. Alan, this is a transitioning for 9100 it will be one of the earlier ones with the IA attached to it, so adopting that single SDO, [00:05:00] can you talk a little about that? 

Alan: Yeah, adopting a single SDO standards developer organization to give people a little background. Previously, we were sector oriented so we actually had publishing in all the Americas, Europe, Asia, Pacific.

Alan: It had started to proliferate from there because there were other ones that wanted to, China, for example, Korea, India, they all wanted to publish their own 9100 standards. So it started to become very complex scheme and with that, we, everybody had their own rules their own process that they followed somewhere longer somewhere shorter and then you come to the how do you coordinate all of those to make sure that they're all identical.

Alan: They all have the same verbiage after translation and everything else started to become an administrative nightmare and very difficult to do. [00:06:00] Going to a single SDO kind of resolved a lot of those issues and it's going to increase our our tack time as far as we can actually get the standards out to the market a lot faster.

Alan: We're able to respond a lot faster. It gives us a system, one system that we can all use. To actually note our comments. Everybody has more visibility. So there's a lot of advantages as far as basically just having a workflow type of program that the teams can use themselves, but also that people can actually look at and get the information that they need. So there's a huge amount of benefits associated with it.

Buddy: If I can add to that as well, IAQG is truly an international organization, so it makes sense that we publish internationally. So I think it's just also consistent with how we're structured, how we're organized, and one of the concerns in the past have been translations.

Buddy: [00:07:00] Sometimes, of course, these key standards get translated pretty quickly. But some of the other standards some of these different groups, it, they're not being done the timely manner. 

Alan: It'd be six months or more. 

Buddy: Yes. So what we're going to do is it's now baked into our process. Once it gets approved by the standards committee level it will go through the translation process. So it can be all released at the same time and varying languages all around the world.

Susan: That's great. And Buddy, you did, I think, touch on this in that first question we talked about about all of the expansive group that you have in the Americas. Alan, can you touch on it? I am going to assume, but I'd like to clarify this, that, just as Buddy's team has it in the Americas, we've got similar various people coming together in Europe as well as in, in Asia Pacific to help collaborate and compose that team that's going to help with the [00:08:00] 9100. 

Alan: Yeah the 9100 series is unique. We, most of the IAQG has 26 standards that we, basically have published and manage out of that the 9100 is really the only one that has sector specific teams.

Alan: We do that actually so we have a review process. We have a wider amount of, visibility wider contacts, so we can reach more of the member companies, more of the industry and get their feedback because this isn't the 9100 team making all the decisions. We listen to everybody. We bring those in, we make sense of them, put them on paper and then say, what do you think?

Alan: So it's really a collaborative effort for the whole industry. If you really think of it in those terms. And, if you add up all three sectors, the Americas, Europe, Asia, Pacific, the entire team [00:09:00] is well over 50, maybe up to 80 people that are all collaborating, working on this. Now, the core team at the IAQG is just 13, but the overall larger scope of the team is much bigger than that. Then when we send it out for coordination draft, of course it's yeah. Thousands of people get to actually comment, actually hundreds. But if you go to the entire Oasis database, it's thousands. 

Susan: So it really is a very much a collaborative effort for the industry by the industry is I know with ISO, they're starting to introduce things into the ISO 9001 in terms of, for instance, climate change, how is that going to impact any of the IA 9100 or is it?

Buddy: So I was actually the co-convener of the TG five for planning the revision of ISO 9001. So just the 9100, we began back [00:10:00] in the year 2020 with the five year review process. Many people who are listening to this podcast may remember that there was a systematic review and it came back where a small group in favor, there was 36 confirmed votes versus 32 to revise.

Buddy: So just a little more than 50 percent wanted to confirm not go revise ISO there's was some activity from that TG5 to look for other reasons for revision doing a design specification and a long story short this summer there was a survey and it was a decision made based upon the survey results to go forward with a revision.

Buddy: One of the activities that ISO is going across all their management standards is to introduce the concept of climate change. So whatever ISO does, we will put into our standards. We are based upon [00:11:00] ISO. Many of our users require ISO 9001 as a certification or at least compliance to some of their customers. So we are staying aligned to ISO. And if ISO revises prior within our plan to go forward with the 9100 we will be incorporating those concepts. 

Alan: Yeah. Just to let everybody know that the actual requirement would just be currently planned is just one, and it's to consider climate change in the context of your organization.

Alan: And it's relatively benign, but it's significant in the fact that we're, looking at something and Buddy might want to comment on this. It's taking us out of what we, there are a lot of, let me say this, there are a lot of important things out there. So one of the arguments was why climate change is more important than world hunger or anything else, or, war, there's a lot of things out there that are very important, but why climate change.

Alan: And obviously it's important. [00:12:00] Obviously, it's big on everybody's agenda and the UN and through. The EU, and then, of course, we got into ISO, and they're really highlighting a lot of these things as priorities within their standards as a whole, and we're working with them the best that we can to try to mitigate some of the impacts and try to lessen, make sense of the whole thing, make sure that we don't over complicate things for the the industry for our industry, so we're looking out for our industry and making sure that they don't do anything that's really going to add a huge amount of cost and very difficult to audit and things like that. 

Buddy: Yeah, the IAQG is focused on time delivery of product to his customers, right? And, it concerns us a little bit. That we are auditors are not trained to be environmental auditors and now with [00:13:00] some introduction and as Alan mentioned it will be in 4.1 I believe as well and also in 4.2. Not as significant input, but also once again our scheme is such that it is certified by auditors. So our auditors are not trained to go audit to climate change. 

Alan: And our concern is it sets a precedent, but we're going to keep them keep, but that's the reason we liaison with ISO. We're with the International Aerospace Quality Group. They have a official liaison with ISO Technical Committee 176, and that's the reason we're there is because of these things and make sure that we can mitigate any impact to our industry. 

Susan: Thank you for that. But let's talk about some of those changes, because there are some things that we are going to see that are going to be different in the IA 9100. What are some of those things that people should be that people could [00:14:00] potentially see. 

Alan: I'll talk a couple of right off the top, which are big to me anyway, and it's the we have a new standard actually was being developed at the time that we published the last revision, so we weren't able to actually do a whole lot with it, but we're adding more ties and bridges and connectivity to APQP, Advanced Product Quality Planning. It's become a very popular standard for the IAQG, one that a lot of people are promoting and using and flowing down. So we're adding some connectivity there and trying to align a little bit better, not duplicate requirements.

Alan: Not add additional requirements to APQP, but basically it's just saying if indeed you want to do these things, yes, APQP is a good way to go and guide people, through that. Another one, of course, is product safety, with the [00:15:00] EASA, which is the European Commercial Airplane Regulatory Agency and the FAA, both going towards safety management system.

Alan: In the last revision, we added product safety. In this revision, we've expanded upon that. We often do that when we introduce a new concept. We go in very light in the first, so people don't get overwhelmed. And then in the next revision, once they've gotten used to the concept, we'll expand upon it. And that's what we did with product safety. Buddy you want to take a couple? 

Buddy: Sure. Along with product safety we used to have some notes that were fairly intense and the same thing is true with counterfeit parts or avoidance of counterfeit parts, those are now shall statements, obviously a concern within our industry. During the last revision, we also introduced the concept of ethical behavior and the importance of ethical behavior [00:16:00] in Clause 7.3

Buddy: Recognize that starts with leadership and also starts with leadership is establishing a culture. ISO has recently published a standard ISO 10010 on culture, and we are adding ethics and culture requirements to clause 511 for leadership. One of the big areas of focus of the industry, obviously, is keeping our information safe whether it be customer information as we even to the point when we fly the products we want to make sure there's it's not tamper.

Buddy: It's tamper proof. So we've added some things in information security. We've also added people may think it's just a small thing, but thought prevention people will know that we have requirements and 851, 854. But it doesn't go up front [00:17:00] upstream enough. So we've added an additional requirement within Clause 8.1 on planning that activity. 

Alan: And FOD is Foreign Object Debris, by the way. 

Buddy: Yes, thank you, Alan. 

Susan: I was just going to ask that, Alan. You beat me to it. So you did talk about a couple things. I want to scroll back with one or two of them. And the first one is, Alan, you talked about APQP. Is there a plan in place for organizations that, still obviously comply, that need to comply with ISO 9000, I'm sorry, let me rephrase that, comply with the IA 9100, but may not use the APQP? Is there a plan in place for that? 

Alan: There is talk about getting a certification path for APQPR 9145, but that's still in the planning phases. We'll see, where [00:18:00] that goes, but there is no plan to actually link the two. Frankly, that hasn't even been discussed, but I think we'll find out, going down the, if it's what the industry needs and wants, then, of course, we'll go that route.

Alan: We have a lot of standards that are very important that we flow down, like the 9102, the first article inspection, that's flowed down probably more than any other, standard to our supply base, but we don't levy it along with 9100. And it's something that organization chooses to do, whether or not they want to use it or flow it down to their supply base. And I think 9145 at this time is still in that realm. 

Buddy: What's important is that we build bridges to 9145 and all of our standards for that matter. But I'll give an example of kind of a, cause I'm a foodie. Unlike, the engine manufacturers that added a bunch of requirements within IS AS 13100, what we have [00:19:00] is more of a smorgasbord, right?

Buddy: We have the IE 9100, we have these other standards, so organizations can pick and choose what's important for flow down, what's important and what's relevant for their organization. 

Susan: And I think you did touch on this Buddy. So if you could expand just a little bit more, you talked about the bridges and product safety with the could you expand a little more about the safety management system?

Buddy: Actually, that's one of Alan's areas of expertise, Alan. 

Susan: I'm going to switch gears then and defer to you. 

Buddy: I'll defer to him. 

Alan: Yeah. Yeah. Yes, it is one of the areas that I've been highly engaged with. It's a parallel path. The requirements for SMS are unique unto themselves, but they use the same processes, and I think that's one thing that people really have to remember they serve the same goal, [00:20:00] but the outputs are slightly different and as far as the 9100 itself, we've tried to keep it confined for the most part into our product safety clause that we have in existence today, and like I said earlier, we just expanded upon that, and we took a note, basically made it into a requirement, it's still as appropriate, but people have the option, but if it is appropriate, you have to do it.

Alan: Whereas before you just had to, it was a note, you'd consider it, but you didn't really have to do anything. So we kind of raised the bar, as far as that goes in the safety management system, but, being a system, it really covers processes. It covers all the things, having a policy, all the things that are already in our standard.

Alan: So we didn't have to replicate it or do anything special throughout our standard because it's really already encompassed in it. [00:21:00] And I think that's the best way to explain it because they run parallel paths, but they have basically the same processes that they utilize, just different outputs. 

Buddy: Yeah, agreed that their synergy is great between the SMS and the quality management system. Of course, SMS is more geared towards safety management system, civil aviation, but of course, our stakeholders also include space, military, defense activities. So product safety, we believe kind of was applicable. That's one of the requirements we have is that it can be applied by all of our stakeholders. So that's why we started and zoomed in on the product safety aspects. 

Alan: Yeah, because it applies to space. Obviously, you don't want to have rockets blowing up and raining down debris on, cities and towns and same with the defense, there's people that fly those fighter jets and stuff like that. So safety is paramount. 

Susan: [00:22:00] Yes, it is. And just as much as safety is also security. So, is there a plan to address information security and in the IA 9100.

Buddy: Yes, that's one of the new areas. We added some requirements regarding information security provisions in the last revision of the standard in Clause 753, but it really didn't go far enough. We are introducing a new clause, I believe it's 717 on information security. It's fairly high level at this point but I think it's it sets the baseline. There's lots of good information out there with regards to information security, whether you're talking ISO standards, regulatory and what we did not want the IA 9100 to become is an information security standard, so to speak, right? So we once again build a bridge over to those requirements. 

Alan: Yeah. And the important thing [00:23:00] to remember here is, back when the 9100 was developed and even ISO 9001 is guilty of this, it was really based on paper based processes, paper, everything. Now everything is electronic it's all cyber. 

Alan: So how do you protect and the information security is confined to our quality management system. We were very clear about that. So it puts it in the context, okay, if you're sharing quality information with a supplier, or they're supplying information to you, making sure that those linkages are secure and, yeah, it touches upon, other standards and you would utilize those to achieve the results that you need, but ours is really focused on, okay, making sure that quality management system standard is protected and we're using these other standards to do that. 

Susan: Wonderful. The one of the things that I did also want to [00:24:00] touch on, and I know both of you have a fair amount of background in this is AIMM and how we, organizations can use AIMM. And I'm going to I was going to start with Buddy. And I'm sure Alan, you're going to, you're going to end with it. So let's start with Buddy and talk about maybe provide a little bit of detail about how AIMM's role is going to be probably even more so in the IA 9100. 

Buddy: Yeah. Thank you very much for that. AIMM is a tool that IAQG has published that's maturity based, that's based upon the 9100 expected outcomes. So it's very consistent with regards to your quality management system and also if it can be applied either for a particular process. So let's say, for example, that I'm trying to build my maturity or capability [00:25:00] around design and development.

Buddy: I can just go in and evaluate that particular process within this within the AIMM tool or I could do it for multiple processes or even my whole quality management system. So it is an excellent tool. I have to say that I'm very proud of the team for what they've accomplished with regard to AIMM.

Buddy: We started off with a kind of an Excel spreadsheet and now we have a very smooth online version that's available at IAQG.org. And one of the things we're trying to do is unfortunately, a lot of times some organizations, I'm sure that's not the case for any of our listeners today, but some organizations when they're, when they go through a transition, they look to go improve their system.

Buddy: I have to go meet these new requirements. All right. But there's not a spirit of improvement when they're not going through a revision. Sure, we have a continual improvement clause, [00:26:00] but a lot of times that's over here or it's in certain aspects instead of looking more globally at our, the effectiveness of our quality management system.

Buddy: So one of the things we have added at this point is within clause 10.3 continual improvement is we have a note saying that organizations should evaluate the maturity of their quality management system and develop plans, improvement plans on how to improve those going forward. 

Alan: Yeah, and I have some breaking news and Buddy knows this, but AIMM is about ready to launch its next revision. It's been upgraded. It's been upgraded so multiple users can produce assessments in an organization. It used to be just a single assessment at a time, but now you can manage them collectively [00:27:00] and they're about ready to announce that. It's just been completed. There's some final preparations to do, and we're going to be asking you, Susan, to actually do a little communication on that.

Alan: Really good timing for that question. Just a little history on AIMM. It is produced by the 9100 team. It's a separate sub team. But and it's based on every single shell statement line item within the standard, the 9100 standard. So everything is covered, so you can actually, like Buddy said, choose to improve one area, one specific area you're having issues or trouble in, or you can do your whole.

Alan: And you can choose what level, okay? We don't, we're at a level two, which is just the bare minimum, to get a certification, probably in level three is a little safer. Level four is where you really start reducing risks as far as your quality management system. [00:28:00] It's really to encourage people to take it to that level.

Alan: And we produced AIMM and a lot of people don't know this it because it was in response to the CEOs and a lot of people saying we're not getting the value out of our quality management system that we want. So we tried to take the excuse away from them literally and say, okay, how can we address this? How can we give people something that will help them improve their quality management system where they can have tangible results? Tangible improvements in their quality, and this is one of the ways to do that.

Buddy: A little bit more about version 1.1. It is based upon user feedback, but also we've added to the requirements. We have gone into ISO 10,000 series standards. Oh yeah, I think it just there and also I'm real excited about as we partnered with the [00:29:00] IAQG supply chain management team and we have hundreds of linkages to supply chain management topics. So once again a lot of times people think of IAQG is just doing the 9100. No, it's about your whole system. We have all these improvement standards. We have SCMH on best practices. We have AIMM on how to assess maturity. So really if we're trying to be a full service organization. 

Alan: That's a really good point, Buddy, because you can actually go to that supply chain management handbook to figure out how you can get to that level, next level of improvement in those areas. 

Susan:  It really is a full suite of services isn't it guys. 

Buddy: Yes, very well said 

Susan: So a lot of things happening, a lot of movement coming up in November, we touched on a number of things to give folks a preview of what to see anything else that we missed in terms of what we want to what we want to tell our audience what [00:30:00] we want to tell our listeners.

Alan: Yeah, I just encourage people's input to the 9100, get their comments in. We do want it to be an international or industry standard that everybody's at least content with it might not be what everybody wants as far as the deep level of detail, but I think it, as far as the quality management systems for aviation space and defense, I think we've made some significant improvements, taking it into the next level, which we always try to do. And I'm just looking forward to everybody's input on that. Buddy?

Buddy: Yes, and as we said, we'd be launching the coordination draft in November timeframe, November 2023 we'll be looking at the comments we receive. We look forward to receiving comments on having the team review those. We're planning for a ballot version to come out midway, probably the June timeframe of 2024, [00:31:00] depending upon how that goes, we could have a release by the end of 2024 or into 2025 we plan on having a lot of communication events, including webinars, podcast, I think podcast would be excellent to talk about some of the topical things going on with regard to the standard articles. So we please look forward to participating in those activities and also going to the IAQG.org home page. 

Susan: Definitely, Buddy. One of the, with that IAQG.org homepage for people looking to get more information, maybe about SCMH, about AIMM, the Aerospace Improvement Maturity Model and various other information, start with that. The homepage of the IAQG. org site up at the top. You can click right on to SCMH or you can dial in at SCMH. IAQG. org. You can go directly to AIM at the top of the homepage or go to AIM. IAQG. org [00:32:00] and see a host of materials. The other one, there is a whole section on, on, on the 9100 standard itself, under the published standards, and I'm sure there'll be a number of communications in the news area, in the events listen on, on, on our channel, the Quality Horizon podcast, as well as in LinkedIn. I think I covered everything, didn't I? 

Alan: Yeah, and we will actually have a key changes presentation that just summarizes the overall changes made and Buddy’s put that together and we'll be making that available also. So that's perfect. That's the easy but easy button to the 9100. 

Susan: There you go. The easy button to the 9100 and that will be on that 9100 published page in the certification section. Gentlemen, I think we've come to the end of our conversation today. Thank you both very much. Always a delight. 

Buddy: Thank you Susan. 

Susan: Yes, I'm certain our [00:33:00] listeners now have a little bit of a better understanding of the 9100 series and the revision status and all of the updates that they might be seeing in the near future.

Susan: So thank you. This is Susan Matson. You've been listening to the IAQG Quality Horizon. Until next time, stay safe.