SAE AS9138

This standard establishes requirements when implementing statistical product acceptance methods to meet defined risk requirements. This standard also establishes the minimum content required to be covered in an organization’s documented procedures that govern their application of statistical product acceptance methods. These general requirements and documented procedures apply the requirements of the 9100/9110/9120 quality management system standards, in addition to establishing requirements for retrievability, safety/critical characteristics, and quality parameters that protect the customer. This standard is an upgrade and replacement for the Aerospace Recommended Practice (ARP) 9013-series of documents (i.e., ARP9013, ARP9013/1, ARP9013/2, ARP9013/3, ARP9013/4) prepared and published by the Americas Aerospace Quality Group (AAQG) in 2005. Technically equivalent standards are published in all International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG) sectors (i.e., Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe). Reasons for publishing this standard include the following: 1 Quality Engineers and planners within many organizations which utilized sampling standards, prior to the publishing of the ARP9013-series of documents, found previous standards difficult to interpret and/or to implement correctly. The IAQG recognized this situation and chartered a committee in 2001 to develop a new sampling standard. The assignment to write a new statistical standard was given to the Americas sector of the IAQG with the stated strategy that once the new document was published and tested in the AAQG, it would be brought back to the IAQG for global implementation. 2 The ARP9013-series of documents was published in 2005 to be simpler than existing legacy standards. It also marked a transition from legacy statistical product acceptance requirement documents that were organized around a measure of producer protection rather than consumer protection. To accomplish this without extreme increases in inspection required the simultaneous introduction of new statistical tools and tables. 3 After experience gained from the initial release of the ARP9013-series of documents, the IAQG believed that the goals of simpler and more effective statistical methods for Quality Engineers and planners had been achieved, but that further improvements were possible, both in the development of new tools and in providing further detail/clarifications within the writing. 4 Furthermore, there have been changes in the 9100/9110/9120 quality management system standards relative to the language associated to statistical product acceptance. This 9138 standard incorporates those changes.