Who is typically responsible for coordinating FAI activities in an aerospace plant?

In most aerospace plants, Quality is responsible for owning the First Article Inspection process, but the day-to-day coordination is often assigned to a quality engineer, FAI coordinator, or program quality representative. That person does not complete the FAI alone. A credible FAI depends on manufacturing engineering, inspection, planning, supply chain, document control, and sometimes the customer or delegated customer representative.

The exact owner is site-specific. Some plants treat FAI as a quality function. Others place coordination under program quality, manufacturing engineering, supplier quality, or a dedicated compliance team. What matters is less the job title and more whether the role has authority to coordinate drawings, ballooned characteristics, routing evidence, inspection results, material and special process records, nonconformance disposition, and approval status.

Typical responsibility split

• Quality or program quality: owns the FAI procedure, AS9102 interpretation, review discipline, approval workflow, and record integrity.
• FAI coordinator or quality engineer: drives the package, tracks missing evidence, resolves routing and inspection gaps, and prepares the submission for internal or customer review.
• Manufacturing engineering: confirms the build method, routing, tooling, work instructions, and process sequence used for the first article.
• Inspection or metrology: records measured results, confirms gage suitability where required, and identifies characteristic-level issues.
• Planning and production control: ensures the correct job, revision, lot, and serial or batch context are tied to the FAI.
• Supply chain or supplier quality: coordinates supplier FAIs, certificates, outside processing records, and flow-down evidence.
• Document control or configuration management: protects revision alignment between drawings, specifications, work instructions, and submitted forms.

Where coordination commonly fails

FAI coordination breaks down when ownership is informal, when engineering revisions are not synchronized across PLM, ERP, MES, and quality systems, or when inspection evidence is collected outside controlled workflows. In brownfield plants, this is common because FAI data may be split across paper travelers, spreadsheets, CMM reports, ERP jobs, MES records, supplier portals, and QMS nonconformance records.

Another common failure mode is treating FAI as a final paperwork exercise. By that point, missing material traceability, outdated drawings, unapproved deviations, incomplete special process certifications, or mismatched routing evidence may be expensive to correct. Strong coordination starts before the part is built, not after inspection results are gathered.

What the coordinator should control

The coordinator should have a defined checklist, access to the current technical data package, visibility into production and inspection status, and a clear escalation path for engineering, quality, and customer issues. They also need enough authority to stop submission when evidence is incomplete or configuration alignment is unclear.

Digital tools can help, but they do not remove the need for procedural ownership. If MES, ERP, PLM, QMS, metrology systems, or supplier portals are poorly integrated, the coordinator still has to reconcile records manually. In regulated aerospace environments, a full system replacement is often unrealistic because of validation cost, qualification burden, downtime risk, integration complexity, and long equipment lifecycles. Many plants improve FAI control by tightening interfaces and governance rather than replacing everything at once.

Responsibility should be documented in the site’s quality procedures or program plan. Customer-specific requirements may also dictate review roles, approval routing, submission format, or use of a customer portal. None of these assignments guarantees acceptance of an FAI package; acceptance depends on the quality of the evidence, configuration control, applicable requirements, and review outcome.