A supplier can only meet requirements it receives. Clause 8.4.3 lists the topics your purchase order and its quality clauses should communicate; read it in your own copy of the standard. In our own words, the topics we check every purchase order template against are:
- What is to be supplied: the part or process, specifications and revisions, and any key characteristics or critical items.
- How it is to be approved and released: first article inspection, test and inspection requirements, statistical sampling, verification at the supplier's site, and certificates with the results you need.
- Who may do the work: qualification of people, use of customer-designated or approved sources, including special process sources.
- What the supplier must tell you: nonconforming product before it ships (and your approval of any disposition), and changes to the process, the site, a sub-tier or a material before they happen.
- What the supplier must pass on: the same requirements to its own sub-tier suppliers.
- What the supplier must keep and allow: records for the period you require, and right of access for you, your customer and authorities.
- Counterfeit parts prevention, product safety and the supplier's people knowing how their work matters.
Sub-tier special processes are where flow-down most often breaks. Once a year, and whenever a routing changes, ask every supplier that touches your parts which special process sources it uses on them, and put each one on the Special Process Supplier Control Matrix (AQL-C16) and the approved list, through the supplier that manages it. The matrix asks the question that matters for each source: is it qualified for the exact process, method and specification on your purchase order, today?
Changes are the other gap. The Supplier Change Notification Register (AQL-C14) records each change a supplier tells you about, what you decided and whether your customer needed to know, and it gives you a place to record the changes you found that nobody told you about, which are the ones that matter most.
Receiving: where supplier control meets the dock
Most of what you know about a supplier's work arrives as paper. A certificate is evidence only if someone reads it against the purchase order and the material in hand. We give receiving a short list for each kind of certificate, and we raise the level on the approved list for any supplier under conditions or probation.
| Certificate | We read | We hold the receipt when |
|---|---|---|
| Material (mill) certificate | Heat or lot number against the marking on the material; specification and revision against the PO; chemistry and properties against the specification | The heat on the certificate is not the heat on the material, or a result is missing |
| Certificate of conformance | Part number and revision, quantity, lot, PO number, the supplier's signature; any concessions referenced | It covers a different revision or quantity, or says 'conforms' to nothing in particular |
| Special process certificate | Process specification and revision, the results (thickness, hardness, method and sensitivity), quantity, lot, who performed it, and the source's name | There are no results, or the source is not the one on your list for that process |
| Calibration certificate | As-found and as-left readings, uncertainty, the laboratory's accreditation mark, the instrument's identity | An as-found reading is out of tolerance: start an impact assessment |
| Distributor's paperwork | The maker's certificate and lot traceability back to the maker | The trail stops at the distributor, or the parts came through a broker |
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A management aid, not certification or a registrar audit. Using it does not by itself show conformity to AS9100D or any other standard, and your customers' requirements may add to it.
Clause numbers refer to AS9100D (SAE AS9100 Rev D) unless another document is named. The standards' text is not reproduced here: use your own licensed copy.
Aegis Insights are our own guidance, labeled wherever they appear: how we approach this work, not a requirement of any standard or customer.