An AS9100-certified aerospace tier-2 supplier whose NCR triage depended on the production supervisor reading every report by hand and routing to the right quality lead. 24 to 48 hours of triage, 18% to the wrong person. We rebuilt the intake: LlamaParse on typed reports, AWS Textract as fallback OCR, ETQ Reliance as the system of record, routing decided by the defect signature, not by who is on shift.
| NCR | Source | Part | Defect signature | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NCR-24018 | shop floor | AS-4102 | weld porosity | weld lead | disposition complete |
| NCR-24019 | receiving | BR-2207 | material cert missing | material lead | return to vendor |
| NCR-24020 | shop floor | HG-9041 | dim out of tolerance | machine lead | rework approved |
| NCR-24021 | customer | AS-4108 | finish defect | QA manager | MRB escalation |
| NCR-24022 | shop floor | WG-3315 | weld bead profile | weld lead | use as is |
| NCR-24023 | receiving | FT-7720 | visual defect, plating | supplier QA | 8D awaiting |
| NCR-24024 | shop floor | AS-4102 | dim out of tolerance | machine lead | scrap |
| NCR-24025 | shop floor | BR-2204 | material verification fail | material lead | CAPA in flight |
At a glance
One quality group, three quality leads by commodity, one ETQ Reliance instance. The routing logic was the product of the engagement.
The engagement
The stack
ISO 27001 · ISO 9001 · DPA and NDA signed at kickoff.
Before, the triage desk
The quality group had a triage process. It ran through one production supervisor, and his day did not always align with the NCR calendar. These were the patterns we found in discovery.
The supervisor read each NCR, decided whether it was a machining issue, a welding issue, or a material issue, and routed to the matching quality lead. When he was on the floor or in a customer call, the queue stalled. Routing latency was 24 to 48 hours on a normal week, longer during audits and year-end.
Pre-build baseline: 24 to 48 hours from NCR receipt to quality-lead assignment.
Mixed defects (weld appearance on a machined part, material trace on a welded assembly) often went to the wrong lead. The lead spent an hour on it, figured out it belonged elsewhere, and reassigned. Every reassignment reset the ownership clock and pushed the CAR cycle.
Pre-build baseline: approximately 18% of NCRs required a reassignment inside the first 72 hours.
NCRs landed as PDFs and tablet exports. The log entry in ETQ Reliance was created after triage, which meant the auditable record of "received" was a stamped folder in quality, not a timestamp in the system. That was manageable, but it cost the quality manager a day of reconciliation in every audit.
Pre-build baseline: 1 day per audit cycle on receipt-timestamp reconciliation.
What we built
The pipeline follows the same five stages we run on every manufacturing quality engagement. The defect-signature router is the part we tuned specifically against the client's commodity map.
Floor tablet exports pushed to SFTP. Receiving mailbox polled on a 5-minute cadence. Customer portal for customer-originated NCRs polled on a 15-minute cadence. Every NCR assigned an ETQ-ready ID on ingest, with a timestamp for AS9100.
Document type tagged on ingest. NCRs, follow-on CAR requests, and routine inspection reports routed separately. Handwritten floor notes routed to the higher-fidelity OCR path.
Part number, operation (machine, weld, assembly), defect signature (dim out of tolerance, porosity, material cert missing), and origin (shop floor, receiving, customer). Defect signature is the join key for routing.
Defect signature mapped to a named quality lead. Mixed-defect NCRs split or routed to the primary signature per the commodity map. Below 0.90 confidence on classification holds the NCR for the quality manager.
NCR posted to ETQ with receipt timestamp, defect signature, and assigned quality lead. Source attached. A linked CAR skeleton created on post. Exceptions routed to a named quality queue with the flag in plain English.
After, the numbers quality signs off
Same quality group, same three leads, same production supervisor, same ETQ setup. The pipeline routed every NCR by defect signature, logged it at receipt, and started the CAR skeleton on post.
The quality manager still owns the exception queue. She still signs off any mixed-defect routing the classifier cannot decide. The difference is that the production supervisor is back on the floor, not triaging NCRs, and the AS9100 clock starts on a timestamp, not a folder. The quality group runs the pipeline today, with Hexaa on call for a fixed retention period.
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You'll leave with a clear next step.
The NCR cites a weld-pass porosity finding on a machined bracket. Machining or welding? The commodity map says the operation that created the defect routes, not the part. The pipeline routes to the welding quality lead, logs the machining lead as a linked reviewer, and posts. No 18% reassignment tax.
