Meridian Aerostructures machines aerostructure housings, brackets, manifolds and skin panels, with about a $12 million year and two shifts. Its largest customer, Customer A (example), scores it every quarter. This is the October 2026 month end, read on the first working days of November, with the figures each tool holds.
November 2 to 4: the counts
The owners entered October's counts on the dashboard (AQL-F08 ): 202 order lines shipped and 191 on time; 162 lots at final inspection and 158 accepted first time; 9 internal NCRs; sales of $1,080,000 with $15,600 of scrap and rework; 144 PO lines received and 124 on time; 21,400 parts received and 32 rejected. The quality engineer classified October's NCRs on the NCR data (AQL-F09 ) the day each was raised. Record checks were clear on both.
The scorecard
Over August to October, five measures were on target, two on watch and five off target, all five getting worse: customer returns (21 parts rejected, 1,617 PPM against 500), customer escapes (four: traveler stamps in August, found by us; short threads in September, CAPA-26-052; in October the mixed lot to Customer A, NCR-26-370, and short spacers at Customer B), customer complaints (five against a target of about one a quarter), corrective actions past due (4 at month end) and supplier on-time delivery (86.2 percent against 95).
Measure Last 3 months Target Status Direction On-time delivery (%) 94.2 95 Watch Better Customer returns (PPM) 1617 500 Off target Worse Customer escapes 1.33 0 Off target Worse Customer complaints 1.67 0.3 Off target Worse First-pass yield (%) 97.3 97 On target Better Internal NCRs raised 10 10 On target Better Scrap and rework (% of sales) 1.52 1.5 Watch Better Corrective actions shown effective (%) 100 90 On target Better Corrective actions past due 2.3 0 Off target Worse Supplier on-time delivery (%) 86.2 95 Off target Worse Receiving rejects (PPM) 843 1000 On target Better Internal audits done to plan (%) 100 100 On target Better
Two readings mattered more than the status. On-time delivery was up from 91.6 to 94.2 percent over three months, yet on target in none of the last twelve. Receiving rejects read on target over three months (843 PPM) while October alone was 2,150: Supplier F's thin anodize was back (NCR-26-379, NCR-26-386). The quality manager wrote both into the comments.
The NCR trend and the cause
The NCR trend (AQL-F09 ) showed no signal: October's 12 NCRs and June's 18 were both inside the upper limit of 23.4. Total NCRs over August to October were 35, down from 47 the three months before. The stratification told a different story: the 2nd shift column had gone from none to two a month until June to five in every month since August.
The cause Pareto named it. Setup or first piece was 14 of the 35 NCRs over the three months, 40 percent, and all 14 were on 2nd shift, which lost its trained setup technician in August. The defect Pareto alone (hole position and dimensions on top) would have sent the team after individual parts.
What it costs
The cost worksheet (AQL-F11 ) put the twelve months' cost of poor quality at a little over 5 percent of sales, against the 1.4 to 2.5 percent management had been hearing as scrap and rework. The setup NCRs alone cost $32,290 over August to October. The quality manager wrote an improvement case: setup sheets for the ten highest-volume 2nd-shift jobs, a tool presetter and a signed first-piece check; $14,600 once and $2,400 a year; expected cut 60 percent; yearly saving $75,096; payback 2.3 months.
The setup problem was not news: the Q3 management review on October 22 had already added the risk (R-22) and approved contract inspection cover on 2nd shift. What the cost worksheet added was the size of it, and that is what got the presetter bought.
November 6: the monthly quality meeting
T. Brooks, the plant manager, chaired. The off-target lines took twenty minutes: the mixed lot went to CAPA-26-058 with lot segregation at packing by November 20, the spacers (CPL-26-011) to an investigation owner the same day, and the burr complaint was already on CAPA-26-061; the past-due corrective actions to the aging dashboard (AQL-B09 ), which showed seventeen open, four overdue, and three closures in the last twelve months with no evidence they had worked; supplier delivery to the second anodize source already approved at management review (MRA-26-09).
The improvement case had gone to T. Brooks on November 3, when the setup pattern was already clear, and he approved it that day with the presetter bought that month. The meeting confirmed J. Alvarez as owner of the setup sheets, logged as action A-26-06 against objective O-26-03 on the objectives register (AQL-F10 ). The register showed one of the four 2026 objectives meeting its target in Q3: on-time delivery (93.6 percent against 95), customer escapes (one, the September thread depth) and scrap and rework (1.6 percent against 1.5) were not.
The readiness front page (AQL-A03 ), read on November 2, showed the registrar audit 29 days away; the three effectiveness checks nobody had booked went into the 30-day plan.
Reporting up
Customer A's executives had been getting monthly updates since the June bore escape. The quality manager's October 30 recovery report (the worked example in AQL-F12 ) showed the rating back to 94 percent from 91, CAPA-26-031 closed and shown effective on eleven lots with Cpk 1.58, and the October mixed lot reported as a setback with its containment and action. The closure criteria (two quarterly scorecards at 95 percent or higher, no escapes on the 4471 family through March 2027) went to the customer for agreement.
All of it goes into the January 21, 2027 management review: the scorecard into the data pack (AQL-F03 ), the objectives register for the 2027 objectives, the improvement case's first two months of results, and the recovery report.
What the example shows
Nothing in Meridian's October was dramatic. The total NCR count was falling and no month crossed a limit. The problem that mattered, a growing share of setup errors on one shift, only showed when the total was split and the NCRs were sorted by cause, and it only got money when it was costed. That is the kit doing its job.
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