AS9100 Consulting

Canada's aerospace industry is the third largest globally, contributing over $25 billion annually to the economy. The sector is heavily concentrated in Quebec — Montreal alone hosts over 200 aerospace companies — with significant clusters in Ontario (Toronto, Ottawa), Manitoba (Winnipeg), and British Columbia. Major primes including Bombardier, CAE, Pratt & Whitney Canada, Bell Textron, and MDA all require AS9100 certification from their Canadian suppliers.

The Department of National Defense (DND) and the Canadian Armed Forces represent a significant market for aerospace manufacturers. DND procurement through PSPC requires demonstrated quality management capability, and AS9100 certification is effectively mandatory for defense aerospace contracts. The Industrial and Technological Benefits (ITB) policy ensures that major defense procurements generate work for Canadian suppliers — but only those with the right certifications.

OASIS database registration, which happens automatically upon AS9100 certification, makes your company visible to global aerospace primes searching for qualified suppliers. Without OASIS registration, you are invisible to the procurement teams at Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon who use this database as their primary supplier qualification tool.

Foreign Object Debris (FOD) prevention is a critical AS9100 requirement that goes well beyond general housekeeping. Aerospace customers expect documented FOD prevention programs with tool control, hardware accountability, area inspections, and contamination prevention procedures. A single piece of debris left inside an aircraft assembly can cause catastrophic failure. We build FOD programs that integrate with your shop floor practices and satisfy prime customer surveillance requirements.

Counterfeit parts prevention has become increasingly important as global supply chains create more opportunities for substandard or fraudulent materials to enter the aerospace supply chain. AS9100 requires documented processes for purchasing from authorized sources, receiving inspection, traceability, and suspect part quarantine. For Canadian manufacturers sourcing globally, these controls must be robust and auditable.

Many Canadian aerospace manufacturers perform special processes — heat treatment, surface treatment (anodizing, plating, painting), non-destructive testing (NDT), welding, and composite manufacturing — that require additional accreditation beyond AS9100. NADCAP (National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program) accreditation is required by most major primes for these processes. While NADCAP is separate from AS9100, your quality management system must support both.

We help clients understand which of their processes require NADCAP accreditation based on their customer requirements and build AS9100 systems that accommodate NADCAP's additional documentation and process control requirements. The overlap between AS9100's special process controls and NADCAP's technical requirements is significant — getting the AS9100 foundation right makes NADCAP accreditation considerably more achievable.

Configuration management — ensuring that every part produced matches the correct revision of the drawing, specification, and process — is uniquely demanding in aerospace. A part manufactured to an obsolete revision can ground an aircraft. AS9100 requires documented configuration management processes that control design changes, engineering orders, and product configuration from raw material through delivery.

Traceability requirements in aerospace typically extend from raw material mill certificates through every manufacturing operation to the final certificate of conformance. For Canadian manufacturers supplying flight-critical components, this traceability chain must be complete, auditable, and retrievable. We design traceability systems that satisfy both AS9100 requirements and the specific traceability expectations of your prime customers — which often exceed the standard's minimum requirements.