Upgrading to the aerospace standard is often mentioned as a reason NOT to engage with defence and aerospace business. EDM took this target on, and found it was not as expensive as expected - around £5000 - after receiving help from MAS they have already secured new business and helped their bottom line. EDM are willing to speak with any MIA member and give advice..
EDM Precision Technologies Ltd, a member of the MIA, is a small, successful precision engineering business, specialising in Wire and Spark Erosion, based on the Silverstone Technology Park.
AS9100 is the international management standard for the Aircraft, Space and Defense (AS&D) industry, which provides suppliers with a comprehensive quality system for producing safe and reliable products for aerospace.
In 2010, as business was picking up, EDM set themselves a goal to increase our proportion of Aerospace and Defence work. Potential new customers from these sectors were interested and understood that EDM produce very high quality work, but were not prepared to spend the time and money to carry out their own quality audit at our premises, a requirement if EDM were to join their supplier list. Simply put, they already had suppliers, in place, with the relevant aerospace quality standard.
After some research, they found that upgrading their current quality system, from ISO 9001 to AS9100, was not going to be quick, simple or cheap – but decided to find out if any government funding was available. EDM arranged a business review with the publicly funded MAS (Manufacturing Advisory Service). The initial meeting in March 2010 took a couple of hours, and just two weeks later, MAS confirmed they would help them.
MAS offered 50% of the cost of the ‘external support’ needed to upgrade EDM's system to the tougher AS9100 standard. They proposed some companies and left them to select one, which took a further six weeks. The paperwork was easy as the external consultants filled out most of it. On completion, EDM received a payment from MAS for £2500 - which went some way towards meeting external assessment costs.
The Aerospace quality audit is very thorough and split over two visits, 4-6 weeks apart during March 2011. EDM had a couple of minor “non-conformities” resolved easily, and were awarded our AS9100 certificate on 17th May 2011.
The overall cost, excluding our own time commitment, was around £7500, to which MAS contributed £2500 and good advice too. Ongoing annual costs will be about £3,000.
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