It’s funny what the fear of missing out can do.
Often, those attending manufacturing events suppress a yawn, glance at their watch and survey the room for an exit opportunity when the topic of standards comes up.
At TCT 3Sixty, ASTM International had a different experience. An announcement the day prior to the event had caught the attention of many walking the show floor. A new manufacturer certification program, supported by 25 OEMs including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Safran and Ford Motor Company and backed by pilot audits featuring contributions from three organisations further embedded in the supply chain, had certainly caught the attention of UK-based manufacturers.
What ASTM International has sought to do with its latest certification program is develop a definition for quality management standards and systems that place a greater focus on additive manufacturing than existing standards.
As Martin White, Director, Technical Operations at ASTM International, told TCT: “Having gone through AS 9100 for aerospace, it’s five days of pain, grey hairs, sleepless nights, and you get to the end and think, 'That was really hard to achieve, but I don’t feel you’ve really asked me any questions on additive manufacturing.' So, this is a complimentary part based on the standards created by the users in the industry and the OEMs; a quality management system plus the additive part.”
There are often calls for the development of standards in the additive manufacturing industry to allow users to get the most out of the technologies, but an extension of that need is supporting manufacturers in complying with these standards in the most straightforward manner.
Take, for example, the 25 OEMs that ASTM International has been working with over the last two years. Instead of a company in their supply chain, say an additive manufacturing contract manufacturer, reviewing 25 sets of requirements, ASTM International believes it would be better for them to review a unified set of requirements, with maybe a bolt-on for industry- or application-specific requirements.
This is what the OEMs have been helping ASTM to define. Using historic manufacturing standards - such as ISO/ASTM 52901, ISO/ASTM 52904, and ISO/ASTM 52920 - as a foundation, they have sought to certify processes, materials and risks unique to additive manufacturing, define shared expectations for quality and create a certification framework.
“What we needed from the product OEMs was a time input; do you see value in this concept? They have and they have then spent the time to help us shape these audit checklists,” White explained. “What we’re asking from the OEMs now is, 'Is this delivering value to you? As we do those initial audits, what feedback do we get from the organisations we’re auditing? Does it make sense?'”
The pilot audits that ASTM International have so far run have been carried out with AM Craft, OECHSLER and KSB – selected because of their place in the supply chain of some of the 25 partner organisations and because they would test the program’s adaptability across different technologies, materials and operating environments.
With their involvement, the questions that the audit asks have been tweaked based on the feedback provided by the contributors. Two of them have since come back to ASTM International to request the certification certificate.
“The audit program is not necessarily new to those organisations,” said Carl Hauser, Technical Fellow, Metal Additive Manufacturing at Wohlers Associates, an ASTM International business. “They have gone through the 9001, but what this does is it drills down more into their additive manufacturing workflows. The general feedback from this is that they feel it was a more robust process for them, because they didn’t feel they were really challenged on the AM side when they’ve gone through other audit processes. They liked the fact they were being questioned on their additive manufacturing practices, and I think that’s a good message to instil across that supply chain.”
Perhaps the stand-out detail when ASTM launched this certification program last month was KSB Specialist Engineer Additive Manufacturing Stephen Braun remarking that the audit was, dare he say, ‘an enjoyable experience.’ It emphasised the widely shared attitude towards standards in manufacturing. That they are a necessary evil, a box that needs ticking, but not something that excites engineers. Nobody gets into that lune of work for the week-long audits and examinations, nor the certificate you receive at the other side.
How, then, can those attitudes be changed? How can the likes of ASTM engage engineers and articulate the importance of standards without, for want of a better term, boring them?
One way is to first think of the process as developing and proving out a best practice. Another is to then tell the story through the outcome of the standard rather than the content of the standard. And then it's the reminder that standards will always get you. There is no avoiding them.
“Eventually, somebody will give you a standard that you must comply to, which is how most engineers experience it,” White said. “Or you can get in at the start and you can create and drive the standards based on your experience and best practices. That mindset has slowly started to change and people have realised that standards cannot just help me with a particular challenge in industry, but I can build an entire manufacturing capability on top.”
ASTM’s recent launch of the new certification program hopes to inspire more to think this way. It also hopes to make the process more streamlined and focused. Instead of trying to monitor 100 standards, read them, digest them, and adhere to them, ASTM instead wants to develop a checklist that consolidates them all into one standard.
“If you think of an SME bureau, the benefit to them is this could give them access to those 25 product OEMs almost immediately, because they have bought into this process, rather than say, 'I can comply against the set of 100 standards and here’s the proof,'” White said. “It’s a unifying approach.”
And a unified approach needs a unified industry. This, White and Hauser say, is not about developing the standards, it’s what comes after the standards. What the best practices and lessons learned can facilitate when the additive manufacturing machines are booted up and set into motion.
As ASTM International launched the new certification program, what the organisation was hoping for was ultimately what it experienced first-hand at TCT 3Sixty. A willingness from engineers to engage and a willingness to no longer treat standards as an afterthought.
“It’s going to go nowhere unless people sign up and support it,” said Hauser. “We’ve got to demonstrate that this is what the industry wants and it’s about bringing more people on board. We’ve got quite a lot of interest as well from the UK. We had no UK companies in the pilot, but we’ve now got a lot of interest from this event that they want to be part of the program.”
“FOMO,” White quipped, “is a wonderful marketing tool, we’ve discovered.”
