Purpose
Working Group 10 Supplier Environmental Qualification System was formed to develop a concept and business case for an aerospace and defense industry standard supplier environmental qualification. Given the importance of sustainability, growth of environmental regulations posing production continuity risk and inefficiency of customer unique supplier assessments, there is a clear opportunity to align on an industry approach to holistically address environmental aspects pertinent to the supply chain. The envisaged supplier environmental qualification concept has three major components: 1) Environmental performance requirements for management systems, handling global chemical regulations and environmental performance reporting. Each requirement category has gradations of rigor designed to accommodate various supplier sizes and differences in supplied goods and services; 2) Audit scheme to validate requirements have been met for the level specified by a customer; 3) An IT system repository for customers to access audit results and track change over time.
Objectives
- Building upon work products from IAEG Work Groups 1 Materials and Substances Declarations, 6 Supply Chain Sustainability Survey Harmonization and 7 ISO 14001 and EMS Implementation, develop an industry standard framework of requirements for supplier environmental certification.
- Design a deployment approach that is flexible enough to accommodate supplier diversity elements and varying degrees of risk in a supplier’s statement of work.
- Use a gated approach for IAEG Board oversight to approve entry into phases of qualification process and IT architecture refinement, iterative business case and implementation feasibility analysis, project plans and internal investment, and eventual industry wide launch and communications.
Gated Approach Criteria
Given the magnitude, complexity and implications for launching an industry wide supplier environmental qualification system, the IAEG Board is using a gated approach for WG 10 oversight and approval into phases of concept and business case refinement. Below are the decision criteria used for the current and prior gate IAEG Board decision to approve continuation of WG10 and internal investment. Select WG10 deliverables aligned to the gate criteria will be available here upon IAEG Board approval.
