AS9100D Certification: Requirements & Process

The time required varies with your organization’s existing quality system, scope, preparedness, and ability to address gaps. Certification typically involves understanding the requirements, implementing or strengthening the QMS, conducting internal audits, completing management review, addressing findings, and working with a certification body through its audit process. AS9100D training can help your team build the internal capability needed for preparation.

AS9100 is an aerospace quality management system standard based on ISO 9001, with additional aerospace-specific requirements. Strictly speaking, organizations are certified to AS9100D by a certification body; accreditation applies to the certification body through its recognized accreditation arrangements. The standard addresses areas such as product safety, configuration management, operational risk, special processes, supplier controls, and counterfeit parts concerns.

AS9100D includes the ISO 9001 quality management requirements plus aerospace additions. Organizations must address context, leadership, planning, support, operation, performance evaluation, and improvement, while also managing aerospace concerns such as product safety, configuration management, special processes, supplier performance, and counterfeit parts. The organization must demonstrate that its processes work and that objective evidence supports its claims.

Auditors look for evidence that documented processes are implemented and effective. They may examine product and process records, configuration controls, supplier management, risk controls, training and competence, product safety practices, nonconformity handling, corrective action, internal audits, and management review. They also assess whether employees understand their responsibilities and whether records are controlled, traceable, and consistent with actual work.

Organizations need an effective internal-audit capability to evaluate whether the quality management system conforms to requirements and is effectively implemented. Internal auditors should understand audit principles, the applicable AS9100D clauses, process evidence, and how to write useful nonconformities. QMS Learning’s AS9100D Internal Auditor Course includes clause coverage, aerospace-specific topics, and a mock-audit capstone.

The AS9100D Internal Auditor Course is self-paced online training covering every clause from Context through Improvement. It includes product safety, FOD, configuration management, special processes, a mock audit capstone, role-profile onboarding, AI Workbench access, Manager Dashboard visibility, and Audit-Evidence Package export. The broader Aerospace & Defense Audit-Ready pathway also includes ITAR Compliance and Counterfeit Parts Avoidance.

Start by mapping requirements to processes, identifying required records, and confirming that employees follow the documented system. Internal audits, corrective-action records, training records, supplier evidence, configuration information, and management-review outputs should be controlled and readily retrievable. QMS Learning supports this work through its Manager Dashboard, AI Workbench, controlled document features, and Audit-Evidence Package export.

No. Training develops knowledge and internal capability, but certification is determined through the organization’s quality-system implementation and an audit performed by an appropriate certification body. Training can help teams understand requirements, conduct stronger internal audits, identify gaps, improve evidence, and respond to findings. It does not itself issue AS9100D certification or substitute for the certification process.