AS9100 clause 8.5 production control: where software helps

The clause covers how work is planned, released, run and recorded, so read the current text of the standard and agree the reading with your certification body.

This guide is not certification advice. It maps typical expectations to the records a shop system can hold, so you can see where paper or sheets leave gaps.

In plain terms, an auditor wants proof that the right instruction, tool, material and person met on the right job. Each of those four elements should trace back to a record that a quality engineer, an auditor or a customer’s source inspector can open without asking the machinist.

Start at the router. It sets the pattern. Each operation should point to a drawing revision, a work instruction and a programme, because if a machinist can open an old NC file the control has failed.

A shop system holds the released revision against the part, blocks older ones and stores who released it and when. That answers the first audit question quickly. Ask it early.

Engineering changes are the trap. When a drawing moves from revision B to C, open work orders need a clear rule: finish on B, rework, or scrap. Record the decision on each open order with the approver’s name and date, so nobody on the floor guesses which revision a half-finished batch of housings follows.

Parts need identity from raw bar to final pack. That means heat or lot number on the material, a serial or batch marker after cutting, and a tag that follows the part between machines. Marking matters too, whether an etched serial, a laser-marked data matrix or a bag tag, because a mark that wears off in deburring or anodising breaks the chain.

Software links these. A material lot is issued to a job, the job produces serial numbers, and each serial carries its operation history. Pull one serial and the whole route appears. Every step shows.

Test the chain backwards. Choose a shipped part, ask for its material certificate, machine, operator and inspection record, and time how long the answer takes. Minutes is good.

Each operation should show a status: not started, running, awaiting inspection, held or complete, so the planner sees the queue at the CMM without walking the floor. A traveller on paper goes missing. A status in a system does not. That matters. A held status should also stop the next operation from starting, so a part waiting for first article inspection cannot slip onto the milling machine unseen.

Special processes such as heat treat, plating and anodising often go to outside suppliers, so record the supplier, the approval status, the certificate received and the date back.

Nonconforming parts need a tag, a hold location and a disposition, and scrap, rework and use as is each need a named approver and a reason.

Software holds records. That is all. It does not decide whether your process is capable or your controls are adequate, and those answers come from your quality manager and your auditor. A system can show that an inspector signed a first article report, but it cannot tell you whether the sampling plan behind that signature was right.

Before buying, list the records you struggle to produce today, run a mock audit pull on three recent jobs and note every gap, which becomes your requirement document.

Then test each item with the vendor using your real routers, because a demo part with a tidy two-step route proves little.