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The National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program (Nadcap) is a global accreditation program that evaluates, tests and certifies processes used in aerospace and defense manufacturing. Nadcap offers two merit levels for its best performing suppliers: 18-month merit and 24-month merit. Merit allows Nadcap-accredited suppliers to reduce their audit frequency to every 18 months or, if you meet certain criteria, every 24 months.
What Does it Take to Earn Merit?
Passing Nadcap audits is a challenging yet rewarding achievement for all involved. These are extensive process driven audits that require discipline and intense attention to detail from contract review through product shipment. Passing an audit requires a constant commitment to training and improvement. All employees need to have a thorough knowledge of what they are required to do and evidence to support that.
It’s important to note that not all suppliers achieve merit. But those who do have high levels of management support. This reality follows a key principle of W. Edwards Deming, the father of quality management, often professing that change starts at the top with informed quality conscious management. He also firmly believed that all involved in the process must understand that quality is everyone’s responsibility. These are critical principles that help drive the success of any quality initiative.
Qualifications for 18-Month Merit
To achieve an 18-Month Merit, you must have passed at least one previous audit with no major findings in the previous audit and the current audit. There shall be:
- No Non-Sustaining Corrective Actions identified on current or previous accreditation audit or on any additional scope audit between the current and previous accreditation audit.
- No verification of corrective action (VCA) audits because of current or previous accreditation audit.
- No Type C Auditee Advisories (reference OP 1109 Auditee Advisories) issued by that Task Group since the start of the previous accreditation audit.
- No more than 14 days of cumulative delinquency.
- No more than 50 percent of major and 60 percent of total NCRs allowed for mode B reaccreditation audit failure criteria in OP 1110 Audit Failure and Risk Mitigation.
- Any other reason not addressed above and defined by the Task Group in their OP 1114 Task Group Operation Appendix or documented in the audit merit screen and approved by quorum during Task Group Review.
Qualifications for 24-Month Merit
To achieve a 24-Month Merit the company must have had two consecutive accreditations in the commodity must have been a minimum of 18 months each. There shall be:
- No major NCRs.
- No more than seven days of cumulative delinquency.
- Any other reason not addressed above and defined by the Task Group in their OP 1114 Task Group Operation Appendix or documented in the audit merit screen and approved by quorum during Task Group Review.
It is important to note that once a merit level is achieved, the challenge begins! It’s common to celebrate a victory and look at it as the end of a game but with Nadcap the game is ongoing. In the aerospace and defense industries, lives depend on it. If we fall prey to the celebration of a victory, we run the risk of relaxing and those great systems can migrate away from the processes that got them the victory.
The best way to hold onto and improve your processes is to perform multiple job audits every year using the information obtained from those audits to steer your Nadcap program. Frequent job audits will identify the weaknesses so that they can be mitigated.
Nadcap will make a company perform better, it’s worth the effort!
AEP is proud to be Nacdap Certified with 24-month Merit. Click here to learn more about our passionate commitment to quality in our plating processes.