AS9101 · Form 2
Form 2 looks like a spreadsheet and gets treated like one — filled in quickly, understood loosely. It is actually three separate systems sharing one grid, and the letter/mark overlap between them is a real, non-obvious source of confusion at audit time.
This page keeps the three apart, counts each one correctly, and explains what a certification body actually does with the form across a certification cycle. Written by a practicing aerospace QMS auditor.
First, what Form 2 is
Form 2, Appendix B of AS9101F, maps up to twelve of the organization's own processes against every clause of the applicable 9100-series standard. Rows are clauses. Columns are processes. Where they cross is where the audit actually happened.
It is not a document filled in once and filed. Per AS9101 section 4.2.2.5, NOTE 2, it is the record that visibly cross-references the standard's requirements to the organization's own processes across the whole certification cycle: pre-populated before a visit from whatever is already known, used to plan a Stage 2 audit from Stage 1 findings, and used again to plan which processes get sampled at each surveillance audit.
Three systems, one grid — count them separately
Four conformity marks, three applicability letters, five effectiveness levels. They answer three different questions, they use overlapping notation (letters and short codes crammed into small cells), and a single clause row on a real Form 2 can carry more than one of them at once. Keeping them straight is exactly the kind of precision this page exists to get right — conflating them is the single most common way a matrix stops making sense to whoever reads it after the audit.
System 1
These populate the Conformity columns — one per process, numbered 1 through 12 — against each clause row. They record what the auditor found, for that process, against that clause, during this audit.
The process met the clause's requirements. No finding raised.
The process did not meet the clause's requirements. This is what a nonconformance report gets raised against.
Applicable, but not looked at during this particular audit — a sampling reality, not a finding. It is due on a future visit, not resolved on this one.
The clause does not apply to this process. Different question from the applicability legend below, which scopes out a clause for the whole organization rather than for one process.
System 2
(A), (B) and (C) mark a clause as not applicable to AS9100, AS9110 or AS9120 respectively. This is decided before the audit, at the scope level, not process by process during it — and it is the piece most often confused with the N/A conformity mark above, because both use the letter A and both mean roughly “this doesn't apply.”
The overlap that actually happens
A single clause row can carry both an applicability tag and a conformity mark on the same line: the (B) legend saying clause 8.3 doesn't apply to AS9110 organizations at all, and separately, a C or N/E conformity mark against whichever processes the clause does reach for an AS9100 or AS9120 scope sharing the same matrix. The two systems are answering different questions — scope versus finding — and a matrix that conflates them stops being readable by the next auditor who opens it.
System 3
A 1-to-5 rating from Table 3, the Process Evaluation Matrix in section 4.2.2.5.3. It is not a conformity mark and it is not scored on Form 2 itself — it is scored once per process on Form 3, the PEAR, and then carried onto Form 2 alongside that process's conformity marks.
A level of 5 requires two things to both be true: planned activities fully realized, and planned results achieved, with no nonconformities. A process can be marked Conforming against every clause that applies to it and still land well below a 5 on this scale, because effectiveness and conformity are different questions — the same distinction the PEAR page covers in full.
How JBird does it
This page would be advice regardless of what we sell, and it holds if you run Form 2 as a spreadsheet. But it is also why the product works the way it does, so it is worth saying plainly.
Inside an internal audit, JBird keeps a QMS Process Matrix marking each clause Conforming, Nonconforming, Not Evaluated or Not Applicable per process, with an objective evidence summary per clause section — and a PEAR per process whose effectiveness rating is scored from process realization and process results, not typed in free-text. Mark a clause nonconforming and the NCR raises from the same screen.
Common questions
Form 2 is the QMS Process Matrix Report, Appendix B of AS9101F. It is a grid mapping up to twelve of the organization's own processes against every clause of the applicable 9100-series standard, used across the certification cycle: pre-populated before a visit, used to plan Stage 2 from Stage 1 findings, used to plan surveillance audits, and used to visibly cross-reference the standard's requirements to the organization's own processes.
They are the four marks that populate Form 2's Conformity columns, one column per process, against each clause row: C for Conforming, N for Nonconforming, N/E for Not Evaluated during this audit, and N/A for Not Applicable.
They are two separate systems that share the same grid. The conformity marks (C, N, N/E, N/A) say what an auditor found for that process against that clause during this audit. The applicability letters — (A), (B) and (C), marking a clause not applicable to AS9100, AS9110 and AS9120 respectively — say the clause was scoped out of the applicable standard entirely, before any evaluation happened. A single clause row can carry both: an applicability tag and a conformity mark, on the same line, answering two different questions.
A 1-to-5 rating pulled from Table 3, the Process Evaluation Matrix in section 4.2.2.5.3 of AS9101. It is scored on Form 3 — the PEAR — one per process audited, and then carried onto Form 2 alongside that process's conformity marks. A level of 5 requires planned activities fully realized and planned results achieved, with no nonconformities; anything less and one of those two conditions did not hold.
It travels with the organization rather than being filled in once. It is pre-populated before a certification visit from whatever the organization and certification body already know, it is used to plan a Stage 2 audit from what Stage 1 turned up, it drives which processes get sampled at each surveillance audit, and — per AS9101 section 4.2.2.5, NOTE 2 — it is the document that visibly cross-references the standard's requirements to the organization's own processes, rather than leaving that mapping implicit.
AS9101, AS9100D, AS9110C and AS9120B are published by SAE International and the IAQG. This page explains the methodology in our own words; it does not reproduce the standards, and you need your own licensed copies. JBird is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or accredited by the IAQG, SAE or ISO.
Pilot program
39 modules are already built and working. Pilot organizations get the system at no cost during development, direct input on what gets built next — there is a Report a Problem button on every screen, and it goes to a register we work through — and a migration path when the IA9100 revision lands.