Aerospace & defence: how it works and what to require
Aerospace and defence procurement combines a tightly controlled approved-supplier base, long lead times and documentation that must survive audit years later. Proconomy governs qualification, approval authority and exception handling, coordinates long-lead supplier work through agents, and retains the evidence behind every decision.
Bought this quarter. Examined a decade from now.
The informal exception is the expensive one in a sector with programme-lifetime retention.
Approved supply
- Approved supplier list constraint at sourcing
- Exception where no approved source exists
- Named-authority approval for a departure
- Conditions attached to an exception
- Programme-specific approval scope
- Requalification on a defined cycle
Evidence
- First-article inspection reports
- Certificates of conformity
- Material and process certifications
- Non-conformance and concession records
- Flow-down acknowledgements
- Retention across a programme lifetime
Programme supply
- Long-lead item planning
- Single-source positions by programme
- Supplier acknowledgement against programme dates
- Obsolescence over a service life
- Capacity commitments per programme
- Schedule slip detected early
Control
- Export-control routing on controlled items
- Sanctions and prohibited-party screening
- Segregation of duties on award
- Complete decision history per purchase
- Audit request years after the fact
- Change assessed before it takes effect
What the platform does here
| Mechanism | What it has to do |
|---|---|
| Approved-supplier-list enforcement | The constraint is applied before invitation and at the point of purchase, not checked from a list afterwards. |
| Exceptions with named authority | Every departure carries the rule that blocked it, the authority who approved it and the conditions they attached — retrievable a decade later. |
| First-article inspection management | FAI requirements held in the workflow rather than in a checklist, so incompleteness surfaces at submission rather than at receipt. |
| Programme-lifetime retention | Retention configured to the longest applicable obligation rather than a product default. |
| Long-lead visibility | Long-lead items and supplier acknowledgements tracked against programme dates, so a six-week drift is visible before the build schedule is rebuilt around it. |
| Export-control routing where verified | Routing configured against workflows verified with your organisation, so a controlled item follows the path your compliance team defined. Classification remains your decision. |
A description of what the practice requires, not a feature list.
What to make any vendor demonstrate
- Attempt a purchase from a supplier not on the approved list and see exactly what stops it.
- Approve an exception and then retrieve it, with authority and attached conditions, as an auditor would.
- Ask what retention period is configurable and who sets it.
- Show a long-lead item drifting and who is told, when.
- Ask precisely what the platform does and does not do on export control.
Definitions. Asked and answered.
Routing can be configured against workflows verified with your organisation, so a controlled item follows the path your compliance team defined rather than the path a buyer remembers. Classification itself remains a decision your export function makes.
The rule blocks the purchase, the agent assembles the options and evidence, and a named authority decides. Any conditions attached to an approval become tracked workflow items rather than notes in a meeting record.
Retention follows the policy you configure. The record links the requirement, the applied rules, the approvals, the exceptions and the evidence, which is what makes a decision explainable long after the people involved have moved on.
No. Agents prepare, coordinate and enforce conditions. Every high-consequence decision is a human checkpoint that cannot be bypassed by an agent.
Approval scope and authority are defined by commodity, programme and entity, so a supplier approved for one programme does not silently become available for another.
An approved supplier list defines which suppliers may be used for which scope of supply, following formal qualification. In aerospace and defence its significance is that departures must be authorised, justified and evidenced rather than simply avoided.
A first article inspection is a formal verification that a supplier's first production part meets every drawing and specification requirement, documented in a report. It is the evidence that the production process, not just a sample, produces to requirement.
AS9100 is the aerospace quality management system standard, built on ISO 9001 with additional requirements covering configuration management, risk, counterfeit part prevention and product safety. It certifies the organisation, not its software.
No. Routing can be configured against workflows verified with your organisation, so a controlled item follows the path your compliance team defined. Classification itself remains a decision your export function makes.