Manufacturers can make meaningful progress toward advanced digital FAI without buying or replacing major systems yet. The priority is to get your data, processes, and constraints ready so any digital FAI solution can plug into your real environment and withstand audits.
1. Stabilize your current AS9102 / FAI process
Digital tools will not fix an unstable or highly variable FAI process. Before investing, make the paper or semi-digital process coherent and repeatable.
- Standardize FAI triggers: Document when a full vs partial FAI is required (new part, design change, process change, new supplier, new tooling, break in production, etc.). Align quality, engineering, and supply chain on these rules.
- Define ownership and handoffs: Map who is responsible for ballooning, measurement plans, data collection, review, approval, submission, and archiving. Capture real-world workarounds, not just the procedure.
- Lock down FAI templates: Decide which AS9102 revision and formats you use (including any customer-specific variants). Minimize local variants that will be hard to automate later.
- Measure current performance: Track rejections, rework on FAIs, cycle time, and where they stall (engineering, supplier, MRB, customer review). These metrics will anchor realistic expectations for digital gains.
2. Clean up drawing, ballooning, and characteristic data
Advanced digital FAI depends on structured, reliable characteristic data. In brownfield environments this is usually the biggest barrier.
- Enforce drawing source of truth: Clarify whether PLM, a drawing vault, or another system is the master for released design. Reduce use of uncontrolled PDFs on shared drives or email.
- Standardize ballooning conventions: Align on rules for characteristic numbering, grouping, and how you treat notes, flag notes, key characteristics, and reference dimensions. Inconsistent ballooning makes automation brittle.
- Start building a digital characteristic library: Even in spreadsheets, begin capturing balloon number, specification, tolerance, feature type, key characteristic flags, and inspection method. Start with your highest-risk or highest-volume part families.
- Clarify revision and supersession rules: Document how drawing revisions propagate to characteristics, old FAIs, and partial FAIs. Digital FAI will need to mirror these rules to be audit-safe.
3. Tighten master data, part genealogy, and revision control
Digital FAI requires consistent identifiers across PLM, ERP, MES, and QMS. Many failures trace back to mismatched part or revision data.
- Harden part numbering and revisions: Ensure part numbers and revs are consistent across systems and that rules for new part vs new revision are understood and enforced.
- Link FAIs to part / rev and routing: Ensure every FAI is traceable to a specific part number, revision, and process/route. Where this is not true, document gaps explicitly.
- Inventory and lot genealogy: For parts requiring FAI, confirm you can trace which lots or serials were produced under which revision and process. Partial FAIs rely on this clarity.
- Define where the “official” FAI record lives: Many plants scatter FAI artifacts across SharePoint, QMS, Net-Inspect, and email. Pick a system of record and start migrating new FAIs there, even if it is still manual.
4. Map your system landscape and FAI touchpoints
Advanced digital FAI must coexist with your current MES, ERP, PLM, QMS, and customer portals. Assuming a complete replacement usually fails in regulated aerospace due to validation burden, downtime, and integration risk.
- Document where FAI data is created and consumed: For example: PLM (design), ERP (part and routing), MES (actual execution and inspection), QMS (NCR/MRB), customer portals (AS9102 submission), and supplier portals.
- Identify data owners and integration choke points: Note manual rekeying, spreadsheets, and custom scripts that currently bridge systems. These are high-value integration targets for any digital FAI deployment.
- Clarify IT/security constraints: Especially for cloud solutions, understand ITAR/DFARS, data residency, VPN and identity management requirements, and how third-party tools are approved.
- Capture validation expectations: For aerospace-grade plants, note how new software must be qualified or validated, and what evidence QA/regulatory expect.
5. Improve measurement system readiness
Digital FAI is only as strong as your inspection capability and data integrity.
- Assess inspection equipment connectivity: Document which CMMs, vision systems, gages, and test rigs can export data in usable formats, and which are locked into proprietary or manual outputs.
- Standardize measurement formats: Aim for common CSV or similar structures where possible, with clear column naming and units. This reduces custom mapping later.
- Strengthen MSA / Gage R&R practices: Ensure critical characteristics have stable and capable measurement systems; digital aggregation will expose poor gage performance quickly.
- Define who can change inspection plans: For traceability, make sure modifications to inspection sequences and sampling are controlled and logged, regardless of digital tooling.
6. Codify change control and re-FAI rules
Re-FAI and partial FAI logic is often tribal knowledge. Advanced digital FAI needs these rules explicit and machine-readable.
- Write clear re-FAI criteria: For design, process, tooling, supplier, and location changes, define what triggers full vs partial FAI. Include customer- and program-specific nuances.
- Align with customers and primes where needed: For major customers, validate your interpretation of AS9102 and contract requirements to avoid automating an incorrect rule set.
- Tie FAI logic into ECO/ECR workflows: Ensure engineering change processes explicitly call out whether FAI is required and how impacted characteristics are identified.
- Preserve historical traceability: When you update FAIs, ensure earlier versions remain accessible with clear lineage; digital systems will need to mirror this behavior.
7. Start with contained digital FAI pilots, not big-bang replacement
In regulated, long-lifecycle environments, attempts to fully replace MES, PLM, or QMS to “solve” FAI usually stall under validation cost, downtime risk, and integration complexity.
- Pick a focused part family or cell: Choose a scope with meaningful volume or risk, but limited system complexity. Avoid the most exotic legacy assets in the first pilot.
- Digitize the end-to-end FAI flow locally: Even using off-the-shelf tools or controlled spreadsheets, structure balloons, characteristics, inspection results, approvals, and archival in a single coherent flow.
- Test coexistence: Ensure the pilot can exchange data with existing PLM, ERP, and customer portals via exports/imports rather than deep integrations at first.
- Collect evidence and lessons learned: Capture what broke (data gaps, role confusion, integration friction). Use this to set realistic requirements for any future digital FAI platform.
8. Prepare people, governance, and audit readiness
Advanced digital FAI increases visibility and auditability, which can be a cultural shift.
- Clarify roles and training needs: Decide who will own digital ballooning, FAI planning, and review. Identify skill gaps in GD&T, data handling, and basic digital tools.
- Define electronic record expectations: Work with quality and internal audit to agree what constitutes an acceptable electronic FAI record, including e-signatures, timestamps, and change history.
- Establish retention and access rules: Decide how long electronic FAIs must be retained, who can view or change them, and how you will demonstrate this during AS9100/AS9102-related audits.
- Document your current-state risk posture: Know where today’s FAI process is weakest so you can prioritize controls and evidence in any digital implementation.
9. Define realistic objectives and selection criteria
Before engaging vendors or building in-house solutions, be clear about what “advanced digital FAI” should achieve in your environment.
- Prioritize by constraint: Decide whether your main pain is engineering time on ballooning, inspection throughput, customer rejections, supplier FAIs, or audit preparation. Different tools optimize different bottlenecks.
- Set non-negotiables: Examples include traceability to drawing rev, export to customer portals, ITAR-safe data handling, and demonstrable audit trails.
- Expect coexistence, not replacement: Assume the digital FAI solution must sit alongside existing PLM, ERP, MES, and QMS for many years. Demand clear integration paths instead of assuming those systems will be swapped out soon.
- Plan for validation and change control: Budget time and resources for software qualification, procedural updates, and training. Treat digital FAI as a controlled change, not a simple IT “tool drop.”
By focusing on process stability, data cleanliness, clear rules, and realistic integration expectations, manufacturers can make themselves ready for advanced digital FAI and reduce the risk that new tools simply surface old problems in a more visible way.
