Quoting to aerospace, what AS9100 adds to the number

A commercial customer and an aerospace customer send the same drawing. The material is the same, the operations are the same, the cycle times are the same. The aerospace quote is meaningfully higher and every line of the difference sits outside the spindle.

Estimators new to aerospace tend to add a percentage and hope. What AS9100 actually adds is specific, it lands in 6 identifiable places, and quoting it properly is the difference between a program that funds itself and one that quietly does not. Figures below are illustrative.

Where AS9100 adds cost, and where it does not

Every piece of material needs material certification traceable to a mill test report, and that changes how you buy and how you store. Commercial work buys bar and uses it. Aerospace work buys bar with certification, keeps the certificate, and keeps the lot identity attached to the material through every operation.

That means segregated storage, lot control on the floor, and a paperwork chain that survives an audit 7 years later. It rules out using the offcut from another job, which is a real yield consequence.

Certified material also costs more to buy and often comes from a narrower list of approved mills, which narrows your buying position. An illustrative premium of 12 to 18 percent on the material line is not unusual, and it is before any of the labour changes.

The consequence people miss is minimum buys. If the approved mill sells in larger minimum quantities than your program needs, you are carrying inventory you cannot use elsewhere, because it is committed to a lot for a customer.

First article inspection to AS9102

A FAIR is a different exercise from a commercial first article and it is heavier. Every characteristic on the drawing gets a balloon, a number, a measured result and a record, on 3 forms with a defined structure.

On a part with 40 characteristics an illustrative FAIR runs 12 to 20 hours between the ballooning, the measurement on a CMM, the recording and the review. That is before any measurement equipment has to be bought or calibrated.

Every characteristic, recorded.

The first article has to be repeated whenever anything material changes, which includes a design change, a process change, a change of machine, a lapse in production of 2 years, or a change of supplier on a special process. Each of those is a partial or full FAIR again.

That repeat condition is the one worth reading carefully at quote time, because it constrains your own operational freedom for the life of the program. Moving a part to a different machine to relieve capacity is a paperwork event rather than a scheduling decision.

Configuration control and what a revision costs

Aerospace revision control is stricter and the cost of a change is higher. A revision on a commercial part is a new program and a new setup. A revision on an aerospace part is that plus a FAIR delta, updated documentation, and possibly a customer notification and approval cycle.

This is why the quote has to name the revision it priced, and why the change clause matters more here than anywhere else. A customer who revises 3 times during launch on a commercial program costs you setups. On an aerospace program it costs you setups plus 3 partial first articles.

Frozen process is the other half of it. Once the process is approved, the routing you quoted is the routing you run, and any improvement you find later is either unavailable or requires approval to use. That removes the usual route to cost reduction over a program’s life.

Special processes and approved sources

Heat treat, plating, non-destructive testing and welding are special processes and they need approved sources. The list of processors your customer will accept is shorter than the commercial list and the prices are higher.

Outside processing on aerospace work also carries more paperwork per lot, with certificates of conformance travelling with the parts and being retained. The processor charges for that and their lead times are typically longer.

Source approval is also a barrier to switching. If your approved plater raises prices, the commercial answer of finding another plater requires a qualification exercise that may take months and involve the customer.

Check the approved source list before quoting rather than after. A part needing a process you have no approved source for is either a no-quote or a qualification project with its own cost and schedule.

Check the source list first.

Lot integrity through the outside operation adds handling as well. Parts from 2 jobs cannot share a rack at the plater if the certificates have to stay attached to each lot, which means smaller batches at the processor and a higher price per piece for the same work.

Records, retention and counterfeit prevention

You are quoting a document retention obligation that outlives the program. Records typically have to be kept for years after the last delivery, in a form that can be produced on request, and that is storage and administration nobody costs.

Counterfeit parts prevention is the newer requirement and it applies mainly to purchased items. Buying from franchised distributors, verifying authenticity and documenting the chain costs more than buying the cheapest equivalent part, and on an assembly with purchased content it is a real line.

Add the audit burden. Maintaining AS9100 certification is an annual cost to your business, and while it is not chargeable to one part, it belongs in the overhead allocation that aerospace work carries.

The premium is paperwork.

The honest way to represent all of this is not a percentage uplift. It is lines. Material premium, FAIR hours, documentation hours, special process premium, records and the certification overhead, each with a figure, in the same way PPAP is broken out on an automotive program.

What to put on the quote

Separate the recurring from the non-recurring, because they are funded differently. The FAIR, the initial documentation and any qualification are one-time costs. Traceability, certificates and records are per lot.

State the revision, the specification issue, the approved sources you priced against, and what a repeat first article would cost if it becomes necessary. That last figure is the one customers most often need and least often ask for.

Quote the commercial part separately if the same drawing is also being made commercially. Anyone comparing a commercial price to an aerospace price and finding them the same has either priced the aerospace work light or been carrying aerospace overhead on their commercial work.

Then track it. The added lines here are estimated from experience on most floors and they drift, and the only reliable correction is comparing what you quoted against what the job cost across the first few programs.