Certification isn't decoration. Supplier quality teams at aerospace companies Ball Systems has work with, such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Collins Aerospace, and L3Harris assess a partner's quality management system for defense, space, and aviation standards before they ever discuss price or lead time. The baseline they assess is looking for AS9100 Certification.
Ball Systems is now certified to AS9100D.
Certification is Not Self-Declared
It's issued by an accredited certification body operating under the IAQG's Industry Controlled Other Party (ICOP) scheme, with auditors qualified to AS9100's companion audit standard, AS9101. Every certified site is listed in the IAQG's OASIS database, so any buyer can verify the certificate, its scope, and its audit history.
In practice, an AS9100-certified shop has documented, audited, continually improved processes for everything that touches a build: operational risk, configuration management, product safety, counterfeit part prevention, supplier control, first article inspection, and post-delivery support.
For an Aerospace & Defense buyer, AS9100 certification quickly indicates that a supplier has a Quality Management System that conforms to the project’s needs. The follow-on implications, such as documentation control, supplier flow-downs, First Article Inspections, and annual 3rd party audits, are given. This reduces the time needed for initial supplier on-boarding and ensures proper quality management is applied throughout the lifecycle of the project.
AS9100 vs ISO 9001
AS9100 doesn't replace ISO 9001. It contains the full text of ISO 9001:2015 and adds roughly 100 aerospace-specific requirements on top. If ISO 9001 is the foundation, AS9100 is the next floor up.
ISO 9001 says: show that you have a working quality system. AS9100 says: show that your quality system meets aerospace's demands for safety, traceability, and lifecycle accountability.
What It Means for Our Customers
- Faster supplier approval. AS9100 is recognized across the global A&D supply chain. Your supplier quality team can verify us in OASIS and skip re-litigating basic QMS questions, focusing their source approval on program-specific requirements.
- Lower program risk. A third party audits our processes at least once a year, so you're not relying on our word that they run as documented.
- Traceability you can use years later. Configuration management and record retention mean we can answer exactly what shipped, when, at which revision, and with which components.
- Counterfeit protection. A formal program keeps suspect components out of your build. That matters more every year as obsolescence pushes long-lifecycle programs toward broker and gray-market sources.
- A defensible safety record. An audited trail of how product safety risk was identified and controlled across the lifecycle.
- Your requirements reach our suppliers. Flow-down obligations carry your quality clauses, special requirements, and counterfeit controls to our sub-tier suppliers.
- Disciplined handling of problems. Nonconformances get documented dispositions, your approval where required, and corrective action that addresses root cause.
- Improvement that's enforced. The standard requires continual improvement, the audits check it, and our customers see it in delivery and quality performance.
- Single point accountability. An experienced engineer will own your program from start to finish, and we can order all of the parts needed to start your build with precision and care.
- 60 years building electrical and electronic test systems. Not a pivot or a stretch. The work we did yesterday is the work we're doing tomorrow.
- A US-owned small business in Westfield, Indiana. Domestic, accessible, and answerable. When you call, a real person picks up.
- ITAR registered with the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC). We're set up to handle defense articles and technical data under export control.
- CMMC Level 1. Our annual self-assessment against the 15 FAR 52.204-21 safeguards for Federal Contract Information is affirmed in SPRS. [If applicable: our NIST SP 800-171 assessment for Controlled Unclassified Information is also posted in SPRS.]
- Certified under the US/Canada Joint Certification Program (JCP). We're eligible to receive export-controlled unclassified technical data from the US Department of Defense and Canada's Department of National Defence.
- No surprises. Change impact is communicated within a week. Weekly status meetings publish timing and open issues. Statements of work are written to remove ambiguity, not preserve it.
What Ball Systems Brings Beyond the Certificate
AS9100 sets the floor. Here's what sits on top of it:
Why We Did It
Three reasons, all about the customers we serve.
- It matches who we already are - names the customers, then says AS9100 makes existing processes official and independently verified.
- It speeds supplier approval: primes require it, so arriving certified shortens qualification and RFQ reviews.
- It sharpens us: annual audits drive tighter quality, throughput, and communication.
For a shop already embedded in A&D work, the question was never if, but when. Programs are getting more complex, lifecycles longer, and primes keep pushing compliance responsibility down the supply chain. AS9100 lets us compete for, win, and execute programs that require it.
Execution, Verified
Competitors that lead with size talk about "solutions." Ball Systems offers a solution in the form of one-stop shop execution.
AS9100 is the independent stamp on the way we already work.