Nadcap (formerly NADCAP, the National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program) is a global partnership program bringing together the major companies opearting in the aerospace and defense industry. Its purpose is to manage a common approach for the accreditation of special processes and to promote continual improvement in the aerospace sector supporting common standards and audit criteria.
Founded in 1989 to address the need to avoid duplication of audits and lowering the workload that brings no added value. Until then, Companies controlled the supplier’s activities directly to determine their compliance within the process requirements. To cut the story short, we can think of Nadcap as a compass for companies in order to safely navigate in the aerospace and defense industry. Even “minimal”: the easiest path to save money teaming with the world’s leading companies in the business.
The goal of Nadcap is to estabilish the requirements for accreditation and to define the operational requirements for the program: a standardizes approach to quality assurance to increase audits efficiency in the aerospace industry.
- Establish strict industry consensus standards that satisfy the requirements of all participants
- Replace routine auditing of suppliers with one approved through a consensus decision-making process of members from the user community
- Conduct more in-depth, technically superior special process audits
- Improve supplier quality throughout industry through strict requirements
- Reduce costs through improved standardization
- Employ trained and technically expert auditors
- Provide more frequent audits for Primes, fewer audits for Suppliers
