AS9120B · Stockist distributors

Most aerospace QMS software was written for a machine shop.

You don't cut metal. You buy parts, prove they're what they claim to be, keep the paperwork unbroken, and ship them on. That's a different quality system with a different centre of gravity — and AS9120B exists precisely because ISO 9001 and AS9100D don't describe it well.

Your process map, not a manufacturer's

Purchasing is a process here. In a machine shop it usually isn't.

JBird builds the interaction map from your own processes, so a distributor's map looks like a distributor. A useful rule when you draw yours: if nobody is primarily employed to execute an activity, it probably isn't a separate process. A machine shop with no purchasing manager folds purchasing into operations. Buying is your whole business, so it gets its own box, its own owner and its own metrics.

A JBird interaction-of-processes diagram for a stockist distributor: one Management process above four core processes — customer order review, purchasing and supplier control, receiving, inspection and traceability, and packaging and shipping — in a single left-to-right flow, with one Support process below and customer requirements and satisfaction bookending the diagram.

A distributor's interaction of processes, drawn from its own data. Click to enlarge.

Where AS9120B puts its weight

The clauses that actually get sampled in your audit.

A distributor's audit spends its time in a narrow band: can you prove what this part is, where it came from, and that the paperwork travelled with it unbroken. JBird is built around that band.

8.5.2

Traceability to the manufacturer's lot

Receiving records that carry the lot or batch through to what you shipped, so a customer's question about a part number four years old has an answer.

8.1.4 · 8.1.5

Counterfeit and unapproved parts

The two clauses AS9120B is arguably built around. Nonconformances raised at receiving carry root cause and effectiveness verification like any other finding.

8.4 · 8.4.1.1

Supplier approval and scope

An approved-source register with approval status and scope, plus on-time and quality performance measured per supplier rather than remembered.

8.5.4

Shelf-life and preservation

Expiry, storage condition and quantity on hand, with expired and expiring-soon both surfaced on the dashboard rather than found during a stock check.

8.2.3 · 8.2.4

Order review and changes

A review record per order — part number, revision, condition, certification required — and a change log with an acknowledgment step when it moves.

8.6

Release, with the certificates attached

Evidence of conformity verified on receipt and passed down the chain, because in your business the certificate travelling with the part is the product.

Scope

You shouldn't have to explain away the clauses you don't perform.

Clause 4.3 lets you exclude clause 8 requirements with a documented justification, and a distributor has real ones: you don't design, you don't run production, you don't install. JBird holds that assessment as a live record rather than a paragraph buried in a manual — and it writes it into your scope statement for you.

JBird's clause 8 applicability assessment for a distributor: each requirement listed with the standards it belongs to, most marked applicable, and installation of approved parts, design and development, and the production control clauses each marked Not Applicable with a written justification.

Every clause 8 requirement, its status, and the justification behind each exclusion. Click to enlarge.

Worth saying plainly

Design and development (8.3) is the largest single thing JBird has not built yet. For a stockist distributor it is also, usually, excluded from scope entirely — so the biggest gap in the product is one you would never have used. We would rather tell you that than let you find it in a demo.

What isn't excluded, and what you should ask us about: product safety (8.1.3) is built; customer or external-provider property (8.5.3) is still on the roadmap. The product page draws the line exactly →

Getting started

Tick AS9120B and you're not staring at an empty system.

A template pack sets your standards scope and writes the five documents every quality system needs — scope statement, internal audit, management review, NCR/CAPA and document control — each scoped to AS9120B rather than a generic pack with the manufacturing clauses left in. Run it again later and it fills only what's still missing; it will never overwrite something you've edited.

JBird's Load Template Pack panel, with a table of the five starter documents each marked will be created.

Click to enlarge.

Pilot program

We're looking for a handful of shops to build this with.

Twenty-seven modules are already built and working. Pilot organizations get the system at no cost during development, direct input on what gets built next, and a migration path when the IA9100 revision lands.

Book a walkthrough → See the product