NADCAP – what is it and why does it matter?
NADCAP stands for National Aerospace and Defence Contractors Accreditation Programme and was launched in 1990.
It is a collaborative effort by the Prime aerospace contractors (i.e. Rolls Royce, Pratt & Whitney, Boeing, Airbus etc.) to set the standard and industry-wide criteria for suppliers of special processes and products.
Joseph Pinto was the executive vice-president at the Performance Review Institute (PRI) which runs the NADCAP programme. He described NADCAP as ‘…an intense, objective, technically focused audit that validates compliance to customer requirements’ and ‘…demonstrates a company has attained a level of technical process capability that is internationally recognised by industry peers’.
NAPCAP Approved EDM
Areas covered by NADCAP include heat treatment, surface treatment and plating, welding, lazer cutting, EDM wire and spark erosion, NDT and more.
The programme is also beginning to look at the manufacture of metallic materials and even the use of coordinate measuring machines in aerospace applications.
Essentially, suppliers of these services cannot supply into aerospace companies that subscribe to the NADCAP programme without obtaining NADCAP accreditation for those services.
