Products manufactured first time, coming off either from work station or from assembly line are called first article and they are subject of inspection. Purpose of first article inspection is to check, if part or assembly is made according specification represented by drawing and by other physical, functional requirements and legal regulations. Planning, purchase order and other applicable documents also involved in the process of verification. There are only few pieces of articles to inspect and if they pass, green light is the signal to carry on with mass production. First Article Inspection report as an evidence will prove the ability of the organization to deliver articles, parts, and assemblies in desirable quality. First Article Inspection is an on-going, multidiscipline effort.
A First Article Inspection is intented to:
• reduce future escapes, risks, and total cost
• help to ensure safety requirements
• improve quality, delivery, and customer satisfaction
• reduce cost and production delays associated with product non-conformances
• identify product realization processes that are not capable of producing conforming products
From the idea to real product, project goes through different phases of development until all the features of products are set. In general, is considered a new project or an existing project. New project means to develop a new product, a new fit, form, and function. An exisiting project is about improvements and product innovation where a small change should be registered on fit, form, and function. Regardless of type of project, performed activities have iterative character which needs to be controlled. Changes registered during development process called also deviations are applied through registered records which are essential parts of quality management systems. To understand changes there is a need to clearly define terms for drawings where deviation request will be proceeding.
• Preliminary drawing – a rough sketch with missing information such as tolerances, bill of materials or other necessary information to launch a feasability study. This drawing usually serves as a guideline to get the idea of design/ shape of the product.
• Customer drawing – is a drawing, which is provided by customer to supplier to perform a feasability study, set up future project milestones, timelines and calculate expected costs for manufacturing a product. Also serves as a reference for communication between customer and supplier what can be done, what is not recommended, considering productivity, efficiency, optimization. By red pencil will be marked all the changes, deviations and additional informations and will be called red pencil drawing. Red pencil drawing can be part of deviation request to approve changes.
• Official customer drawing – is a drawing which is reviewed by customer and supplier and deviation request for changes are accepted and approved. Official customer drawing is part of order or contract, where all the requirements of the product are accepted by both side, by customer and supplier. For removing doubt, it is better to process accepted changes into a new version of official customer drawing. However often happens, there is no time to adapt changes into new version. In this case official customer drawing become the last version with accepted change marked red and will be called deviation drawing.
First Article Inspection is a process to find out areas which are non-conformed, indicate and propose them for changes. The results of First Article Inspection are shown in report. In general report consits of three forms:
• Form 1: Part number accountability – used to identify the product that is having the First Article Inspection refered as “FAI part.
• Form 2: Product Accountability – Materials, Special processes and functional testing – used if any materials. Special processes or functional testing is defined as design characteristic.
• Form 3: Characterisitc Accountability, Verification and Compactibility Evaluation – used to record inspection results for design characteristics and to document nonconformances.
If the FAI report is accepted, all the proposed changes are also accepted, and results will be applied on next production run of the article. If it is rejected, after correction action a partial first article inspection is enough focusing to report only correction of non-conformance.
[1] AS9102B Aerospace First Article Inspection Requirements, SAE International