Understanding NADCAP

Lynn’s route to excellence and superior standards lies in its continuous dedication to maintaining its various accreditations. Arguably the most impactful on the company’s operational system and work culture is that of audits such as Nadcap.

The roots of Nadcap and Lynn Welding are considerably similar in makeup. From its origins as a one-man welding shop to a booming business, notorious for its exemplary services and dedication to fulfilling each customers’ goals as if it were their own, Lynn perhaps knows better than most just how remarkable the creation of the Nadcap audit has been. What started as a simple concept originating in an Equal Partners Conference and was later introduced as an acronym, has since established itself as a brand that no one in the aerospace industry can afford to ignore. Thanks to the combined efforts of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs or primes), such as Pratt and Whitney, Northrop Grumman and GE Aviation, it is nearly impossible in 2021 to become an aerospace supplier without being Nadcap accredited.

Nadcap is an unprecedented development in the aerospace industry. Before its creation, it was unheard of that such a foundational institution would come into existence – and continue to be implemented – through the cooperation of industry experts, program subscribers, and providers.

Through the Performance Review Institute (PRI)’s continuous efforts – such as putting together meetings and activities for the Supplier Support Committee (SSC), Task Group, and Primes – Nadcap has been able to mutually benefit both the subscribers and their providers, while simultaneously driving aerospace standards and expectations of service with an audit that strives for continuous improvements within its field.

Lynn Welding utilizes the stringent checklists provided by the Nadcap audit in conjunction with that of AS9100, another global aerospace standard, as a meter stick to prompt itself to continually grow and adapt into a bigger and better company – not only to become a place worth working for, but also to work with. With a long list of accreditations under its belt and over 60 years of experience, Lynn holds itself to extremely high service standards.

To maintain its eminence in the aerospace, military, medical, and defense industries, Lynn is always looking to implement better ways of handling, producing, and distributing products. In our typical, good-natured spirit of things, we have decided to put together this comprehensive guide to Nadcap and all it entails in relation with our special processes so that others might also come to understand the depth of its continued impact on the aerospace and defense industries.

Keeping aircraft production at peak levels while continuing a track record for safety means the need for reliability and quality manufacturing. Aerospace vendors must produce safe and efficient airplanes while simultaneously seeking new technology and equipment to drive the industry forward. Doing so requires significant involvement at all phases within the supply chain, especially with specific aircraft under scrutiny due to 2019’s crashes.

Programs such as Nadcap were designed to perform audits and provide the necessary accreditation for aerospace manufacturers. By taking the time to educate yourself on the Nadcap program, you will understand how suppliers and manufacturers partner together to improve efficiency and safety across the aerospace industry.

The company responsible for administering the Nadcap audit is the Performance Review Institute (PRI).

PRI was created through the concerted effort of aerospace Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs or primes). Throughout its development, it has sought to be an instrumental mediator between the needs of primes and their suppliers. Subscribers are audited by PRI as well, with the hopes of managing and ensuring the quality of the systems in place at every level of an aerospace job.

There are several tiers to the internal organization of PRI to ensure that the audits never overstep their bounds or trample on the needs or concerns of the suppliers. The key department in this effort is the Supplier Support Committee (SSC), through regular meeting and discussions, the committees garner the general opinion and input of suppliers. Nadcap is an audit with a core concept of being mutually beneficial to every tier that it’s applied to in the industry, whether one is a prime, a tier one supplier, or tier two. Therefore, the activities brought up during committee gatherings and events are intentionally designed and implemented to keep enhancing and improving the effectiveness of the audit at meeting the needs of suppliers and subscribers.

Members of the Task Groups department are also in attendance at SSC events. The Task Groups are the people in charge of choosing expert engineers from the specific field of a given company to audit them. For instance, only welding experts can proctor an audit to a welding company, so the Task Group would be the ones in charge of finding a reliable, knowledgeable auditor for them. To become a Nadcap auditor is an entirely different series of procedures from what suppliers like Lynn Welding have to go through during a Nadcap audit.

The managerial sub-departments within the PRI include: the board of directors, administrative staff, and the Nadcap Management Council (NMC). All of which are responsible for ensuring that any issues occurring at the level of the Task Groups and SSC’s are properly and completely managed.

PRI is a not-for-profit, industry-driven company. Through their dedication to making Nadcap better and better each and every year, the audit has become one that represents consistency, high standards, and control. For every question on the audit’s checklist, there are a hundred different controls that could, and often are, double-checked and verified.

The route to becoming Nadcap accredited is the same for any supplier. As previously stated, it is recommended that companies aim for a scheduled integration of Nadcap compliant systems through a yearlong planning process. There are a number of guides already readily available on the internet to assist with such an undertaking, so it won’t be re-hashed here, and instead this section will detail the process as if the yearlong preparations have already been properly attended and addressed.

When the company has completed their preparations and has passed their own internal audit, ensuring that they are ready for the actual Nadcap proctor to visit the facility, then they will have to request an official audit from the PRI website. They will then be contacted to finalize the schedule, and an expert in their field will be assigned to them. Unlike AS9100, where the auditor is responsible for that company for five years, the assigned one for Nadcap is not guaranteed to be the same and is likely to change each time. If the auditor does not get along with, or has problems/conflict, with their assigned location, then it is also within that company’s rights to request a new auditor be chosen.

The duration of the audit depends on the size of the company, and the projected timespan is typically conveyed long before the auditor arrives. For the length of the audit, the proctor will hold daily debriefing meetings to discuss any new findings and general progress updates.

It is important that any questions or disputes are brought up and discussed during this time, well before the audit is completed and submitted to the Technical Staff for review

Throughout the duration of the audit, there are a number of ways a given auditor may choose to organize or schedule things, but there are a few aspects of Nadcap that are guaranteed to take place. With each service that needs to be verified and gone through, the auditor performs three primary tasks: going through the accompanying checklist – which will be previously supplied so that they can be filled in and submitted 30 days beforehand – reviewing the paperwork of accompanying jobs chosen, and personally viewing work on the floor. The checklists vary every year the audit takes place, so the only real way to be fully prepared is to stringently adhere to a yearlong preparation schedule and have a thorough internal audit take place prior to the official PRI one.

To ensure that only the questions that apply to any given company are assessed, the auditor will ask the quality team to review the scope before any processes can begin being evaluated. Once the scope has been signed off on, it cannot be modified or argued against. For this reason, it is extremely important that these initial steps are carried out by a fully competent and informed member of the staff. Perhaps to ensure that this is already the case, in order to hold a Nadcap audit, a company must already have a qualified quality system. In Lynn Welding’s case, our quality department is currently kept to AS9100 compliance requirements. 

To ensure that a Nadcap audit is effective, it has to be thorough; therefore it is vital that no time is unnecessarily wasted. To this end, not having pre-submitted and filled out all of the checklists is a minor finding and can possibly even lead to additional charges being brought up against the company for.

After the auditor finalizes the records online, the PRI Technical Staff are the ones who initially receive and review the company’s results, as well as approves any root cause corrective actions. Corrective action reports (CARs) are the resulting plans of action for any major or minor findings resulting from the audit. It is not unheard of that a CAR is rejected on the first try, so it is especially important that first time audit participants take their submissions seriously, as the deadline to submit corrections is extremely restrictive after the initial one. On-site corrective actions can be accepted by the auditor, but they are essentially just a first-time submission. The finding will remain open until the supplier uploads all of their corrective actions, and the on-site approval will then be reviewed alongside the other submissions by the Technical Staff.

After the close of an audit, there is a twenty-one-day deadline to submit root cause corrective actions. Determining a root cause for findings that have been grouped all together and reported as one minor NCR is vital in maintaining merit status and keeping the number of findings to a minimum. If the Technical Staff does not agree with the root cause supplied by the quality team, then they may choose to no longer accept them as one group and instead split them off into separate findings altogether.

There are five standard headings that come pre-populated when submitting a corrective action report (CAR) through the PRI portal: immediate containment, root cause, impact of identified cause, action to prevent, objective evidence, and effectivity date. The Staff Engineer has 14 days after the submission of the above necessary information to provide their pass or reject verdict. If the Staff Engineer rejects the CARs submitted, then the quality team has a deadline of 7 days before they have to resubmit a second, updated version addressing what the Staff Engineer has designated as unsuitable or insufficient. The new submission has to be responded to within 7 days by the Task Group.

A company can only submit a corrective action 3 times. After the third failure, there are two potential outcomes: 1) the company fails their Nadcap audit or 2) they are granted another chance. The route taken is up to the Staff Engineer to forward along to the Task Group to reject or accept. If a company fails the audit, then they will need to put out a statement to all their customers informing them that they have failed the audit, and modify all of their products, services, and documents to no longer contain anything to have to do with Nadcap (if they are a previously established Nadcap accredited supplier, that is).

The loss of Nadcap accreditation is therefore very damaging for a company. Not only are your findings published on your virtual record – this happens regardless of whether you pass or fail – but now your loss of status has been broadcasted to all of your current and potential customers.

To attain a Nadcap accreditation is to proclaim that your procedures and products are stringently maintained and measured to the highest of standards. To lose a Nadcap accreditation is therefore announcing the very opposite. Your customers will think you are sloppy, unreliable, and negligent in maintaining and managing your internal systems. There would be a significant loss to the business.

However, if we assume that the Task Group has approved the audit and corrective actions, then the company will be accredited as Nadcap approved to service the aerospace industry. This approval comes with the ability to use the Nadcap logo and name, which is likely to also attract more subscribers and customers into utilizing your business.

For Lynn Welding, this accreditation is especially vital for our business, because we provide services to the leading primes of the aerospace industry, as well as a number of military and defense ones. Our customers are especially reliant on our Nadcap accreditation as a sign that we are certifiably tested and up to the task of providing them with welding services.

The initial goal of the Nadcap audit was to ensure that there would be less of a need for primes to personally audit their suppliers, and in keeping with that, the audit has specialized, modified questions that can be asked of any supplier of a given prime. These portions of the audit are called supplemental checklists. This ensures that if a supplier is to keep their Nadcap accreditation, this is a trustworthy sign that they are up to their customer’s latest standards.

Likewise, if a company is to lose their Nadcap accreditation, then the prime will know that they are not providing a service that meets their compliance requirements.

In the welding industry, it therefore follows that a Nadcap accreditation is one of the base necessities for a supplier to have and maintain if they are to stay in business.

A fusion weld is characterized by the merging of two or more materials – same or different – through the application of heat. The heat can come from a variety of means, such as gas/fuel, electricity, or laser beams. In some cases, filler material is added to the welding process and is melted down to bring about a homogeneous (as in the filler material is of the same composition/type as the base) or heterogenous (they differ in composition) weld. Not all fusion welding operations require or make use of filler material, but Lynn Welding has frequent need for them, so they are included in their Nadcap evaluation’s scope. Fusion welds that do not utilize filler material are referred to as autogenous.

To produce a fusion weld, the base materials have to be melted first and then, if applicable, the filler material should be allowed to melt and flow into the weld area. During this process, it is vital that the melting is fast but still under the welder’s control so that they can strictly monitor the weld pool forming. The welder must also have knowledge of heat affected zones (HAZ), as these too can negatively impact the integrity of the part if they are unaware or untrained in working/dealing with them. In addition, if there is too much heat generated, whether in a certain area or across multiple spots, then the part can become distorted as well.

To attain a Nadcap accreditation is to proclaim that your procedures and products are stringently maintained and measured to the highest of standards. To lose a Nadcap accreditation is therefore announcing the very opposite. Your customers will think you are sloppy, unreliable, and negligent in maintaining and managing your internal systems. There would be a significant loss to the business.

However, if we assume that the Task Group has approved the audit and corrective actions, then the company will be accredited as Nadcap approved to service the aerospace industry. This approval comes with the ability to use the Nadcap logo and name, which is likely to also attract more subscribers and customers into utilizing your business.

For Lynn Welding, this accreditation is especially vital for our business, because we provide services to the leading primes of the aerospace industry, as well as a number of military and defense ones. Our customers are especially reliant on our Nadcap accreditation as a sign that we are certifiably tested and up to the task of providing them with welding services.

The initial goal of the Nadcap audit was to ensure that there would be less of a need for primes to personally audit their suppliers, and in keeping with that, the audit has specialized, modified questions that can be asked of any supplier of a given prime. These portions of the audit are called supplemental checklists. This ensures that if a supplier is to keep their Nadcap accreditation, this is a trustworthy sign that they are up to their customer’s latest standards.

Welder & Inspection Qualifications 

For every inspector and welder within the company, there must be proof that they are qualified for their position and their jobs. For both positions, the company must maintain and retain documentation proving that they have passed eye exams and weld and color vision testing. For resistance, welders have to have eye exams every two years and fusion is every year. The frequency of these tests also has to be explicitly stated in a written record. There must also be documentation covering who can and cannot work on certain materials/positions.

When qualifying a welder, the person and machine have to be qualified. There are two primary documents needed for the latter portion of the process: the weld production schedule (WPS) and the procedure qualification record (PQR). These ensure that our machines are capable of producing acceptable welds and that our schedules have been tested for consistency and repeatability. The PQR can be inspection certification, test result, or an old job qualifying the WPS, so long as it is objective evidence.

For inspectors, to prove that they are qualified for their position, the company has to have records in place showcasing that they have been tested and trained to aerospace standards. For Lynn Welding, we keep training records and eye exam results for all of our staff. This ensures that no one who is colorblind or not approved for a certain material – no one colorblind can work on titanium unless they test out of it (only applicable to some specifications, not all) – ends up working on or inspecting a job that they don’t have the qualifications for.

Material Cleanliness

In the aerospace industry, it is vital that materials are cleaned, maintained, and controlled. This is directly reflected in the fact that nearly every audit Lynn Welding has gone through has inspected for the control of cleanliness in relation to job or part materials. Nadcap checks to verify that there is a procedure in place for not only how staff should clean the materials but also for what needs to be done if any contamination occurs. They also check for how these procedures are flowed down to the floor.

In the case of Lynn Welding, the traveler that moves through the welding process with the job contains any relevant cleaning and packaging information from the customer’s or standard specifications. Some customers require their parts to move from stage to stage with very specific, protective measures. It is necessary then to have documented proof detailing how each staff member is trained to look for and identify those requirements. The same goes for cross-contamination records; a detailed training record goes a long way during an audit to ensure that all procedures, standards, and specifications are being followed and controlled for within a company.

Wire Brush 

Since fusion welding often involves filler material and resources that need to be wire brushed, records need to be maintained that document the composition of the wire brushes used by the welders.

Additionally, all wire brushes should be controlled so that no welder can enter a booth, grab one of an unknown composition, and potentially contaminate a job. For this reason, the release, restocking, and labelling of the brushes are strictly accounted for at Lynn Welding and any unlabeled or untraceable materials are considered unusable.

Supplemental Checklists

There are such things as “supplemental” checklists. These specialized processes are ones that are specifically requested by the primes or subscribers that a company is recognized for servicing. For instance, Lynn Welding works on projects for Boeing, Bell Helicopter, Gulfstream, General Electric, Rolls Royce, and Raytheon, as well as a number of other primes, so the audit will often have an equal number of supplemental requirements to check over. The more primes the company works for, the more additional requirements – or supplemental checklists – that they will likely have to go through. Oftentimes, the prime’s checklists serve to double-check and verify that specific interests of theirs are properly reviewed and accounted for. Their checklists, just like those of the main audit, can change or alter paths.

  Titanium: Some primes may wish to double check that lint free gloves are always required when dealing with titanium parts, especially if their projects routinely utilize titanium compositions.

The use of these gloves prevents stress corrosion. If the welds were to be touched directly, the chlorines would react with the residue left behind in such a way that causes stress corrosion cracking, which would result in the failure of that weld. Therefore, a subscriber who uses a lot of titanium may want to require that the use of gloves is properly regulated and controlled for in their suppliers. To document control for this, Lynn Welding has explicit directions on every job’s traveler and markings that travel with the parts throughout the welding process, as well as training records to attest to the competency of the staff who work with titanium.

Filler material: An OEM that uses very valuable or high-dollar material compositions may wish to confirm that all filler material used is strictly maintained. So, they may require the auditor to check how weld wires are stored, labelled, cleaned, and disposed of. A company such as Lynn Welding would then have to prove to the auditor that the weld wire is locked away, that only authorized personnel have access, and that the “authorized” person has the training or certifications necessary for that responsibility.  

wire itself is of an appropriately assessed and documented composition. In this case, the quality team should have well-kept records documenting the certifications, proving the compositions and suppliers of their wires are reliably accounted for.

Gas: A prime who primarily relies on gas fusion welding may want to verify that their suppliers have a system in place that retains all certifications of conformance (CoC). The CoC may not be enough for them though so the certification of analysis (CoA), which costs a bit extra, and details exactly what is in the gas, may also be required by them. Again, these records should be maintained by the quality team and held onto for a time frame specified by either customer or standard specifications.