AS9100 Certification – AS9100 Certification - The Journey Continues - A Small Business Story

Industry: All Industries

Keywords: AS9100, Lessons Learned, Challenges, Small Business, Best Practices

Level: All Levels

Highland Machine Works –AS9100 Certification - The Journey Continues - A Small Business Story-Abstract-This presentation begins with an overview of Highland Machine Works, a small machine shop in Camden, Arkansas, and their capabilities. We achieved certification July 2022, and since that day have continued to maintain requirements and pursue continued improvement. During this time our business has continued on the journey towards full integration not only into our processes, but into our way of thinking and operating.

Areas of focus include:

• Lessons Learned
• Challenges specific to our small business
• How to best influence culture change
• Continued attention to cost
• Best Practices
• Employee training and retention

As we move forward we must continue to search for processes that make maintaining an AS9100 certification that has evolved primarily in large industries to be attainable in our small business.

Jason D. Duke

Quality Director/CFO, Highland Machine Works, Camden, AR, USA

Jason Duke is currently the Quality Director and CFO for Highland Machine Works, Inc. located in Camden, AR. He has experience in manufacturing engineering roles from entry level to management with major corporations, medium sized industries, as well as the smaller manufacturing and machine shop company founded by his father. He has worked with various companies in multiple countries with manufacturing roles for over 30+ years. In those years, Jason has honed and developed a broad base understanding and application of many different manufacturing processes to include but not limited to: welding, machining, waterjet technologies, metal 3d printing technologies, and machine design and automation. He has applied those skills across various industries in support of making products that help reduce the impact on sea life during offshore oil well demolitions, to providing products that flew in space on the shuttles, and currently are in orbit with the International Space Station.

Areas of expertise include Lean/Six Sigma Black Belt, project/program management, tooling development, process engineering, and change management. Mr. Duke holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration and Bachelor of Science in Industry Technology. He is a graduate of a leadership development program with one of the largest defense contractors in the world and spent ~20 years of his time with that company honing those skills and accepting roles with ever increasing responsibility and impact.