Straight answers to the questions shops actually ask

Your records are the evidence that you did what your system says you do. AS9100D wants you to retain documented information as evidence of conformity, and to control how long you keep it and what happens to it after that. It does not pick a number of years for you.

Your retention period comes from three places: your own procedure, your customer contracts, and any regulatory requirement. In aerospace the customer flow-down is usually the longest one, so read it before you set your own number. Keep the travelers, write down how long you keep them and where they live, then follow your own rule.

The standard asks you to select auditors and run audits so the process stays objective and impartial. The old line about never auditing your own work came from ISO 9001:2008. The 2015 wording, which AS9100D carries, is about objectivity, not a flat ban.

In a three person shop you cannot always hand it to someone else. What you can do is trade areas, have a second person review the findings, or bring in an outside auditor for the processes you own. Whatever you choose, write it down so your registrar is not left guessing how you protect impartiality. Your internal audit process is a process like any other, so it can be audited too. If you have to audit your own area, having an outside auditor audit that process is a clean way to show you took impartiality seriously.

AS9100D contains all of ISO 9001:2015 and adds aerospace requirements on top of it. The ones a machine shop feels first are operational risk (8.1.1), configuration management (8.1.2), product safety (8.1.3), and counterfeit part prevention (8.1.4).

On top of those you get first article inspection, foreign object debris control, special requirements and critical items, and human factors in your root cause work. If you already run ISO 9001 well, you are not starting over. You are adding the aerospace layer to a system that already works.

Not by that name. ISO 9001:2015 and AS9100D ask for documented information, not a document called Quality Manual. The requirement to have one went away in 2015.

Most shops still keep one anyway, for two good reasons. Customers ask for it during approval, and it is a useful map of your system for a new hire or a registrar. If you keep one, keep it short, and make sure it describes what your shop actually does. A manual that does not match the floor is worse than no manual.

AS9102 calls for a first article on the first production run of a new part, and again when something changes. The usual triggers are a design change that affects fit, form or function, a change in manufacturing source or location, a change to the process or the material, or a lapse in production of two years unless your customer specifies something different.

A partial FAI covers only what changed and references the original report, so you are not re-measuring the whole part for one revised dimension. Read your customer flow-down too. Some primes are stricter than the standard.

Correction is what you do to the part. Sort it, rework it, scrap it, get a concession from the customer. Corrective action is what you do to the cause so the same thing does not come back next month.

Auditors look for both, and the second one is where most shops get written up. If your corrective action is retrain the operator, ask yourself what made the mistake possible in the first place. Since 2015 there is no separate preventive action clause either. That thinking lives in how you handle risk.

The records that tend to get pulled early are management review, internal audits, and corrective actions, then customer feedback and on-time delivery, then calibration.

There is a reason for that order. Those records show whether the system is actually running or just sitting in a binder. A shop that holds real management reviews and closes its CARs is usually in decent shape everywhere else. A shop that skipped both is going to have a long week.

Fixable, as long as you do not hide it. Get the audits done, write a corrective action on yourself, and adjust the plan so the schedule you publish is one you can actually hit.

Auditors see late audits all the time. What costs you is when nobody in the shop noticed they were late, because that says the system is not being watched. Showing that you caught it, wrote it up, and fixed the schedule is a much better conversation than pretending the calendar was on track.

The standard asks that measuring equipment be traceable to national or international measurement standards where traceability is required, and that you keep the evidence. It does not name a lab or require accreditation by itself.

Most shops use an accredited lab anyway, because the certificate is cleaner evidence and because customers ask for it. Check your contracts first. Plenty of aerospace flow-downs do require accreditation, and that requirement is yours to meet whether or not the standard says so.

You need the control, not the volume. The standard tells you what to control and leaves the how to you, which means a small shop can run a real system on a short manual, a handful of procedures, forms your people will actually fill in, and records that prove the work happened.

The trap is not too little paperwork. It is paperwork nobody uses. If a form exists because a template had it, and your operators work around it, that form is an audit finding waiting to happen. Build the system around how your floor already runs.