AS9100 accreditation helps ACE fly high

One of Shropshire’s fastest-growing manufacturers is targeting more opportunities in the aerospace sector after it secured a prestigious quality accreditation.

Advanced Chemical Etching (ACE), which employs 70 people at its state-of-the-art factory in Telford, now holds AS9100 for the first time after it successfully completed its audit in less than five months from the initial gap audit.

Led by Quality Manager Ian Radford, the process involved every member of the company and involved fine tuning its quality management system and introducing problem solving teams to encourage continuous improvement across all the different engineering disciplines.

This has seen the business consistently achieve more than 97% on time delivery and 99.5% right first time across its customer base of primes and tier 1s.

With the quality certification now in place, ACE is planning to increase its work in this sector by an additional £1m of turnover.

“AS9100 is one of the most demanding quality accreditations in industry, so we’re delighted to have secured it within a few months and with such an impressive result,” explained Chris Ball, Executive Director at Advanced Chemical Etching.

“It has been a real collective effort with pretty much every member of the team involved in the planning, execution and then the eight-day audit. No stone is left unturned during this process, and it really means you are at the top of your game.”

He continued: “Importantly, it will also open new doors for us as we will now be able to tender for additional work with clients both at home and abroad.”

Advanced Chemical Etching supplies precision components to 25 companies involved in the aerospace industry.

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