Land, Lessons, and a Shop First — what two sets of plans, one rejected quote, and a lot of risk management taught me. House It started on our honeymoon, nearly a decade ago. Meghan told me she'd always wanted to build a house in the country. My dad did exactly that when I was five, and I'd wanted the same ever since. I'd owned homes for 13 years and built a shop at one of them, but building a house from nothing was a different scale of intimidating. Since we both wanted it, t

Glenn Hodge of NexusIQ and I have had quite a few discussions lately on how culture impacts the success of transformational efforts, continuous improvement, or really just operations as a whole. He referred to culture as the bedrock upon which any other effort lies. I really like this analogy, as I have seen quite a few initiatives fail simply because the culture simply would not support them, causing them to essentially "sink in the muck." Quality culture has been probably

Big W is now offering technical due diligence to investors who want a clean, risk-based assessment of their target’s quality system and operations. We are the only known consultancy that is highly versed in the requirements and customer expectations of PQR 1020, PQR 1050, & PQR 1060, which govern nuclear weapons production. Additionally, we are well-versed in AS9100 & ISO 9001, ITAR, CUI, and other regulatory requirements frequently encountered in aerospace and defense work

We are excited to announce that in addition to Apex's Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing Fundamentals course and their AS9100 Internal Auditor training, we are now also instructing their AS9100 & ISO 9001 Lead Auditor course. This course is authenticated by Probitas and recognized by the International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG) to cover all requirements by AS9100D & ISO 9001:2015. As always it was a great time, and although challenging, all participants came out wit

Part one covered Clause 7.1: the resources it takes to run the system, ending on organizational knowledge and the retirement cliff bearing down on it. This post continues the organizational knowledge thread with its counterpart, ISO 9001 / AS9100 Clause 7.2: Competence. 7.2: Competence What's expected: Determine the necessary competence of people doing work under your control that affects quality performance. Ensure those people are competent on the basis of appropriate ed

Reviewing your SWOT, your strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats is one of the more challenging tasks when determining strategic priorities, especially for smaller manufacturers who have more closely-knit leadership teams. At the same time, many of the external factors that drive SWOT analysis are common to many small manufacturers. This is what I think is really cool about the SWOT summit, you are able to get the combined perspectives of your peers, offering a

Clauses 4 through 6 were about knowing your business, leading it, and planning. Clause 7 is where the standard asks the blunt follow-up question: do you actually have what it takes to do any of it? Clause 7 covers a lot of ground, so I'm splitting it across two posts. This one covers 7.1, Resources, which breaks into six subclauses running from people and buildings all the way through the knowledge in your employees' heads. Next time we'll pick up 7.2 through 7.5: competence,

On August 31st, 2001, I landed in Sarajevo. The Army was a much different place before 9/11. We were still on that post cold war high, where the US was on top of the world. Our tactics were still based around the Soviet threat, mostly as a default. We knew that wasn't what the next war would look like, we knew someday there would be another one, but nobody could guess what it would look like. Bosnia was the hottest thing the Army had going on in 2001. By then it was calm ge

It's hard to believe it, but it's been a year since I started this crazy journey! I nearly missed it, as things have really begun picking up steam. A strong network One of the biggest sources of uncertainty coming into this was my network, or lack thereof. The bad thing about the corporate world is that most of your network is in your Outlook directory. The Nuclear Security Enterprise is a fairly closed ecosystem, and due to security concerns most folks are not very active

Clause 5 asked whether leadership owns the system. Clause 6 asks what leadership plans to do with it. This is the clause where the standard stops describing structure and starts demanding foresight. It has three parts: actions to address risks and opportunities (6.1), quality objectives and planning to achieve them (6.2), and planning of changes (6.3). It's also the clause the 2026 revision restructures most visibly — so we'll cover what's expected today and what's changing

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Last time we walked the PDCA loop and worked through Clause 4, where the standard makes you define the problem before it lets you solve it. Now we move to ISO 9001 & AS9100 Clause 5, and to the part of the standard that most reliably separates companies with a real quality management system from companies with a certificate. Clause 5 is short. It's also the clause where implementations most often fail, because it's the one requirement top management can't hand to the quality

I've recently had the opportunity to support Apex's AS9100 Internal Auditor training. It was a huge honor, we had a great group of students and it's always so rewarding sharing this knowledge that is critical to keeping the aerospace industry safe. As always Apex has been great to work with, and I'm looking forward to a bright future of continued partnerships. In addition to AS9100 Internal Auditor Training, I have also been teaching their Geometric Dimensioning and Tolera

The last two posts covered why certification is worth pursuing and why independence is what makes it real. Now we get into the standards themselves, and we're going to start with the shape of the thing before we start reading the words. The Standard Is a PDCA Loop If you've been around manufacturing or continuous improvement at all, you've seen Plan-Do-Check-Act. Plan what you're going to do, do it, check whether it worked, act on what you learned, repeat. Deming popularized

In last week’s article I discussed some of the benefits of obtaining compliance to either ISO 9001 or AS9100. This week I’ll discuss the difference between compliance and certification, and why independence and impartiality are important at every level. In subsequent articles we will review the clauses, how they benefit customer satisfaction, some examples of what it takes to be conforming to these requirements and how conformance can benefit operations. The idea to write

If you've spent any time around a machine shop or a manufacturing floor, you've probably heard someone grumble that a quality certification is just a binder full of paperwork nobody reads until an auditor shows up. That reputation isn't entirely undeserved. A lot of companies implement these standards badly, treating them as a compliance tax rather than a management tool. But when they're implemented well, ISO 9001 and AS9100 aren't paperwork. They're closer to a set of blue

It’s been a long and incredibly nonlinear journey to get where I am today. I’ll start by saying that I never intended to get into quality engineering. I sought an engineering degree so I could help design the next Camaro and make it super sweet and fast. But the one thing that I found greater value in than going fast is opportunity, and there has always been plenty of opportunity in quality engineering. Because Racecar A really big part of this journey was Formula SAE (FS

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The culture in the Nuclear Security Enterprise (NSE), particularly with regards to quality, was without a doubt the best I've experienced. One thing that really made it great was the common understanding that perfection is impossible. While that may sound odd at face value, what made it powerful was that when issues occurred, they tended to be taken a lot less as a personal blow.

Let's paint a picture of two very different environments, whose root differences can be largely traced back to differences embedded deep in their quality culture. Let's begin with what sadly is more likely to be the default state. "Quality isn't a department" is a phrase that feels largely over-used these days (and beloved by AI), but the situation I will begin with is one where quality is, indeed, more of a compartmentalized department, silo'd outside of production, design,