The AS9000 Aerospace Basic Quality System Standard was an early industry effort to align quality system requirements across the U.S. aerospace sector and reduce the burden of multiple customer-specific rules for suppliers.

AS9000 was developed in the late 1990s under the auspices of the Society of Automotive Engineers, now SAE International, by major U.S. aerospace prime contractors. It was created at a time when generic quality management standards did not fully address aerospace needs, and suppliers were required to comply with multiple company quality systems.

• The standard was based on the ISO 9000 family and added 27 requirements specific to aerospace manufacturing and assembly.

• It focused on defect prevention, continual improvement, and reducing variation and waste in production processes.

• AS9000 was designed to fit into an integrated management system rather than stand alone.

Companies involved in the work included Boeing, Lockheed Martin, GE Aerospace (then General Electric Aircraft Engines), Pratt & Whitney, Northrop Grumman, Collins Aerospace (successor to Rockwell Collins and Hamilton Sundstrand), Sikorsky Aircraft, and AlliedSignal, which merged into Honeywell in 1999. The U.S. government did not take an active role in the standard’s development, which was overseen by the G-14 Americas Aerospace Quality Standards Committee.

AS9000 was later revised as AS9000A. AS9000A was published in February 2004 and cancelled in the same month. The AS9000 family is a historical standard and is no longer used for certification, having been overtaken by AS9100, which expanded the approach into a globally coordinated aerospace quality management standard.

More information about AS9000 is available on the official SAE International standards page.