Premier Deep Hole Drilling Limited - Premier's quality measures up to AS9100

Premier's quality measures up to AS9100 - again

Premier Deep Hole Drilling, the UK's leading supplier of honing, ejector and gun deep hole drilling, as well as precision machining services, has recently been successfully re-assessed for the renewal of its AS9100 aerospace standard quality management systems accreditation for the next three years.

Stuart Grant, managing director of the St Albans-based company, says: "Having our quality management systems independently assessed to AS9100 is not just a consideration for supplying customers in the aerospace industry. It also provides confidence to customers in other industry sectors that our manufacturing processes and business management is controlled to the highest standard."

AS9100 is far more demanding and ensures far greater control than the ISO 9001 accreditation more generally adopted by drilling and machining companies. The aerospace industry has embraced AS9100 as a means of improving quality and on-time delivery within its supply chain. Driven by public demand for safety and reliability, component quality has to approach near perfection via continuous improvement. Quality management systems in conjunction with third party audits are integral to this continuous improvement.

Manufacturing a product as sophisticated as an aircraft requires special attention during the production processes. It's important, for example, to ensure that the drawing revision and any specification flow-down, work methods and equipment, material specification and certification, subcontract treatments and so on are all fully traceable, often for a period of 20 years or more after the work has been completed. Controlling production processes is essential in order to demonstrate that all operations have been correctly performed. This is especially important when conducting specialist operations such as deep hole drilling and honing, which are often carried out when the components are very nearly complete.

Trevor Pomfrey, QA Manager, says: "Aerospace companies, like customers in other industry sectors, rely upon tooling and production equipment such as computer-controlled machines, to produce components. This equipment often forms the basis for product acceptance. In these cases, under AS9100 it is essential to demonstrate the integrity of these tools and machines and to develop a process that will ensure an adequate overview of the entire process."

Attaining AS9100 is becoming a pre-requisite to supplying customers in the aerospace industry. This is being driven by the major OEMs through SC21, the SBAC's supply chain for the 21st century improvement programme, to which Premier is a signatory.

This is an important market sector for Premier as Stuart Grant concludes: "During the past 25 years, global civil aviation has grown by 5 per cent per annum. In 2008, the global civil aerospace industry generated revenues of around US $130 billion. Although the current global economic recession will impact over the next two to three years, the industry has been forecast to continue growing at an average rate of 5 per cent per annum over the next 20 years."