First article inspection paperwork, without the typing
A first article is mostly paperwork. Before anyone measures a part, every characteristic on the print has to be listed, numbered, and turned into an inspection sheet — and then written up again for the report. Here's how to skip the typing.
What a first article package actually demands
A first article package asks you to account for every characteristic on the drawing: number it, record its nominal and tolerance, say how it's measured, and capture the result. Aerospace work adds the AS9102 characteristic data on top. It's exacting, and it's almost entirely transcription before a single part gets measured.
The transcription problem
That transcription is where your hours go. A tolerance read off the print, a characteristic that got missed, a number that doesn't match between the sheet and the report — each is a finding waiting to happen, and each revision starts the transcription over.
The plan, from your own criticality
PlusMinus reads the print and does that pass for you. You classify each characteristic — critical, major, standard — by clicking its balloon. Then you set the plan: what gets checked in process, what gets sampled and how often, what gets checked at final, and whether you want a first piece. Repeated features work the way you'd expect — 8X Ø10 is one characteristic, checked once, with the quantity recorded. Save the setup and reuse it on your next drawing.
The forms that come out
Out come your inspection forms in Excel and PDF — a row for every characteristic, sample stages, and name, signature and date lines for your operator and inspector. PlusMinus also captures the AS9102 Rev C characteristic data for export. To be straight about it: this isn't a finished, customer-submittable FAIR package — there's no signature or approval block, Form 1 carries a subset of its fields, and the workbook isn't the official form. What you get is your characteristic data and your inspection paperwork, without the typing.
What if we can't upload drawings to the cloud?
Then don't. Linked Operations can build you an on-premise install that runs inside your own network. It's a custom build rather than a download, and it carries no compliance certification of its own. Tell us what your contract actually requires and we'll tell you straight whether we can meet it.
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