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IATF 16949:2016 surveillance audit — clean pass, zero nonconformities.

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Our IATF 16949:2016 surveillance audit closed last week with zero nonconformities — no majors, no minors, and no opportunities for improvement that required a corrective action plan. This is the cleanest result we have had since the original certification in 2021, and the team deserves the credit.

What the audit covered

IATF 16949 is the global automotive quality management system standard. It is significantly more rigorous than ISO 9001 and is the prerequisite for being on the approved supplier list of every Tier-1 automotive OEM. Our surveillance audit ran three full days on site, with six cumulative auditor-days across the registrar’s team.

The audit team examined: control plans for two passenger-EV programs and one commercial-vehicle program; PPAP packages for current production parts; gauge R&R studies on three of our CMMs; first-article inspection records back to 2024; nonconformance and corrective action logs; supplier scorecard data; and customer complaint dispositions.

What we changed since the 2021 cert

Three things drove the cleaner result this cycle:

  • Statistical Process Control (SPC) on every machine. In 2021 we had SPC running on the high-volume work cells. By 2024 every CNC center, every laser-weld station, and every CMM was on continuous SPC. This means we catch drift before it becomes a nonconformance.
  • Layered process audits. We added a tier of weekly internal floor audits between the daily team-lead checks and the quarterly management review. These cost time but they catch the drift that monthly metrics miss.
  • Supplier risk scoring. We onboarded a formal scorecard for every materials supplier. If a supplier scores below a threshold we either remediate or replace — no more rolling forward with weak vendors.

Why this matters for our customers

For our existing customers: nothing changes operationally. The work that produced the clean audit is the same work we do for you every day.

For prospective customers: a clean IATF 16949 surveillance is the kind of evidence that lets your supply chain group move quickly through approved-supplier onboarding. Ask us for the audit summary letter when you are doing your initial qualification.