Abstract

Risk is an undesirable situation or circumstance that has both a likelihood of occurring and a potentially negative consequence. Our lives are defined by risk. From the time we wake, to the time that our head hits the pillow, we spend our days calculating and mitigating risk. In business, risk is identified in various ways. One example is the statement of work (SOW). The customer will provide drawings, specifications, requirements, or detailed instructions of what they want us to deliver to them. We review the risk from meeting the delivery date, to our loss if we make a mistake and have to rework. Other forms of risk are meeting the local regulatory and statutory requirements. These includes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Hazard Material Control (HAZMAT), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), to name a few. Risks also include ISO 9001:2008 based standards such as the aerospace AS9100C, which requires you to identify special requirements, critical items and key characteristics that come into play along with all the above. The question remains how do we meet the specific risks defined by our customer contracts?This article will lead the audience through some of the new requirements in AS9100C, including Section 7 of both the AS9100C and the ISO9001:2008 standards, which deal with the worker bees, or the people inside the companies that actually produce a product or provide a service. In the revised standard, and in Section 7, we find that the mitigation of risk is the main focus, and a consistent theme that is relevant to employee training, suppliers, material, production, product handling, packaging, shipping, delivery and feed back from our customers.Learn about the various tools that can be used to mitigate risk, and which steps must be followed, as part of AS9100C Section 7.1.2, to mitigate risk during manufacturing. The article also addresses control of work transfers, and provides guidelines on how to categorize the various levels of risk. It should be understood that risk management can only remove a very small percentage of risk.