AS9145 is how the Aerospace community would like you to bring a product from concept all the way to maturity.

It started out as Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) in the Automotive world, how we brought a vehicle from concept all the way to maturity. Aerospace then took that and developed AS9145 which is a standard that you will see come up during contract. So, if your customer requires you to engage in AS9145 management of your project, that’s how this came into play.

Is AS9145 different than AS9100?
Most people think of AS9145 as different than AS9100, but it’s not. AS9100 is the quality management system for Aerospace. Most companies are AS9100 compliant already, if not certified.

AS9145 is how you do Section 8; like doing a contract review during the design, during the purchasing, and more. It is laid out in five distinct phases.

The big selling point is simultaneous engineering between product and process.

In the past, product design and process design have largely been thought of as separate entities. In AS9145, both product and process initiate together, evolve together, and mature together in order to get to a product that is not only the right fit, form, and function, but also that is manufacturable. That is one of the huge selling points, as it leads to less redundancy, less design iterations, less tooling costs, all due to redesign.

What the AS9145 group did, they said at each phase we will put together activities and deliverables, these deliverables are the outputs of AS9145.

Why is this beneficial?
You do not want to get the end of your program and figure out that you don’t have everything built in. Pump the brakes and check at each phase if you have the deliverables in order to exit the phase. These deliverables are absolutely engineered to build one on top of the other.

If you are in phase 2, you cannot get to the phase 2 deliverable until you get the deliverable from phase 1. It is always an evolution.

Can you skip forward past phase 1 with some of the deliverables left undone?
You absolutely can.

However, when you get to phase 2 that’s going to be a problem because unless you do phase 1, you will not get past phase 2.

Recap:

• AS9145 is how you bring a product to market in the Aerospace industry all the way from concept to maturity
• It aligns perfectly with AS9100 section 8; and if you’re already engaging in AS9100 you’re already doing these activities
• There are 5 distinct phases
• Each phase is predicated by the one before, every output builds on the output before

In the world of Aviation Core Tools, there are five largely recognized core tools. AS9145 is the mother of them all. All the other tools exist within AS9145, this is the genesis.