Systel Quality Management

Keeping the customer happy: the first rule of good business

At Systel, quality management and continual improvement are at the heart of all company activities and involve all personnel.

A key element of maintaining exceptional quality of output comes from strong engagement from everyone in the organization, from our leadership team down.

We have been ISO9001 certified for many years and in 2021, we achieved certification to the more rigorous AS9100 aerospace quality standard. We are continually focused on not only maintaining our AS9100 quality certification with annual third-party audits, but also on improving our processes and workflows to better serve our customers and support their missions.

We have developed a robust internal auditing program, comprised of cross-functional teams to ensure compliance to processes and fidelity of data across all business operations and systems. In 2022, we passed our first AS9100 annual surveillance audit with zero non-conformances found, something which speaks volumes to our incredible team’s immense commitment to quality.

A disciplined approach: ensuring high production quality

The aim of our production testing is to identify any issues before a product ships. We burn-in all systems for 24 hours at 50C in our production thermal chamber to identify any latent defects that can result in infant mortality failures in the field. We routinely subject prototype systems to comprehensive design validation testing (DVT) and environmental testing to ensure a sound design and transition the system into production-readiness.

Our teams are trained to identify root causes of any problems, and to develop corrective actions using the 8D problem-solving model, with a focus on product and process improvement, in order to identify, correct, and eliminate recurring problems.

If an issue is encountered the first task is to stop shipping to protect the customer immediately. Employing the disciplined 8D approach permits a lasting corrective action to be devised. The effects of these actions and the resulting improvements are reviewed on a monthly basis.

Our quality management system extends to our supply chain as well; we flow down our AS9100 standards to our suppliers and work closely with them to ensure consistent reliability.

Our purchasing and quality teams use uses monthly, quarterly, and annual supplier performance analysis data to defective parts, non-conformances, late line items, and other critical metrics. We also conduct on-site audits with critical suppliers, reviewing their qualtiy systems and their supply chains. The focus is always on supporting our customer with the highest quality products and service.