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Technical excellence at Mini-Circuits
is coming into sharper focus as we
approach the fifth decade since our
founding by Harvey Kaylie in 1969.
This focus has been emphasized in
our current initiative to recertify our
quality management system (QMS)
to the new revision of AS9100. As
you may expect, Mini-Circuits places
the highest priority on product
quality, and this has had many
benefits for us and our customers.
Our customer returns have been
consistently below 10 PPM over
the past year, and we will continue
finding ways to drive this metric
even closer to zero.
Mini-Circuits is a world-renowned
innovator and supplier to the RF
and microwave industries with more
than 15,000 active component-level
devices and test systems. Our stated
commitment to our customers is
to provide product continuity and
avoid obsoleting any products that
have been designed into customer
systems. In addition to maintaining
availability of active legacy models,
we regularly add more than 1000
new products to our line annually.
This places a heavy burden on us to
ensure the robustness of design and
materials as well as the overall quality
of our systems. Consequently,
while the new revision of AS9100
includes a number of significant
changes, many of its elements have
historically been incorporated into
Mini-Circuits’ QMS.
We received our first ISO9001
certification in 1997, and this was
expanded to AS9100 in 2008 based
on the requirements of our aerospace
customers. AS9100 Revision D has
finally been released after months
of delays, marking the first major
change to the standard in many
years. While some suppliers look
at these changes with trepidation,
Mini-Circuits welcomes them and
considers the new requirements a
validation of our existing policies.
The revised standard takes
previously ‘generic’ elements and
expands upon them to build a more
rigorous approach to quality and
technical excellence as demanded
by the aerospace industry. Our
challenge is to incorporate these
elements into our already-rigorous
QMS. Mini-Circuits has two full-
time internal auditors and a team
of twenty volunteer auditors from
various departments. We typically
conduct more than 150 internal
audits per year. Our transition to
Revision D has included external
training of key members and a
formal internal retraining of all
supervisory staff to the rewrite of
our QMS.
The major changes to the standard
AS9100 Transition Drives Technical Excellence
Arthur Ackerman, Mini-Circuits
28 l New-Tech Magazine Europe