AS9100 certifications for local Mexican companies
By Adina Moloman
The major Industries Manufacturing in Mexico have strengthen their position as key players in the global automotive supply chain based on their competitiveness as a manufacturing platform and now are positioning as one of the main runways for the international aerospace industry, since many multinational aerospace corporations established in Mexico in the last ten years.
According to the National Strategic Program of the Aerospace Industry in Mexico one of the strategy for the aerospace sector is the development of local suppliers and encourage the aerospace cluster development in key regions. Based on this, FEMIA (The Mexican Federation for the Aerospace Industry) with the support of Mexican Government and ProMexico helped released a project by the Mexico-E.U. Competitiveness and Innovation Program (PROCEI), where they helped migrate local suppliers from the automotive and auto parts sector to aerospace sector by authorizing an AS9100 certifications to a small group of local Mexican companies.
The AS9100 Aerospace Management Systems is a widely adopted and standardized quality management system for the aerospace industry based on the ISO 9001 quality system requirements.
The institutions mentioned above allocated a budget of US$2.8 million to complete this task. They identified a number of 50 local suppliers but only 20 local Mexican companies entered the program. A number of 18 out of 20 local suppliers achieved the AS9100C certification last year.
By becoming registered to AS9100 the local suppliers can gain a competitive advantage since encompasses all the requirements for quality and safety relevant to aerospace sector and basically is a condition required by all major aerospace manufacturers (OEMs) for doing business with them.
Is important to understand that during the process of certification the local suppliers learned also how to transform the cost structure of their operations, maximizing their own resources while improving their bottom line.
