A quality management partner you keep for a decade, not an engagement
American Quality Management (AQM) is the long-term quality management partner for US regulated manufacturers. Built on more than 25 years of quality management experience, headquartered in Southern California. Seven standards covered by the same named team. ISO 9001:2015 certified ourselves — Cert No. 1118558 — because we run the systems we build for our clients.
Helping companies qualify for global contracts across major supply-chain sectors
Our focus, condensed.
AQM is the long-term quality management partner for US regulated manufacturers — built for small and medium companies that need a quality system to survive customer audits, win supplier contracts, and grow into new certifications over time. We work across the full standards portfolio: ISO 9001, ISO 14001, AS9100, AS9110, AS9120, ISO 13485, and Nadcap. We don’t disappear after certification. We stay with our clients across 5- to 10-year arcs through surveillance audits, multi-cert expansions, and ongoing improvement. Built on more than 25 years of quality management experience, headquartered in Southern California; clients served nationwide. ISO 9001:2015 certified ourselves — Cert No. 1118558.
The arc, not the engagement
Most consultants sell single engagements. We’ve spent more than 25 years in quality management running the multi-year version — and most of the 100+ manufacturers we’ve served are companies who stayed with us after the first certification, through surveillance audits, multi-cert expansions, supplier-development requirements, and the next certification their largest customer decided to ask about. The arc below is what those engagements typically look like. We didn’t invent the pattern. We’ve just walked it enough times to know where it bends.
Year 1 — First certification
Six to nine months of consulting through gap analysis, QMS build, internal audits, and the certification body audit. The deliverable is the certificate; the foundation is a QMS that has to hold up to the customers' supplier audits in the years that follow.
Year 2 — First surveillance audit
Often paired with the first time the client's prime customer or OEM supplier-development team comes to look. Most clients retain us through both.
Years 2–4 — The second certification
A general manufacturer adds ISO 14001 for an environmental compliance contract. A Tier-2 aerospace shop adds Nadcap when they win a special-process scope. A medical-device firm adds ISO 9001 for a customer that requires it alongside ISO 13485.
Years 3–7 — Multi-cert maintenance
Annual internal audits, surveillance audit prep, RCCA on findings, training new hires on QMS roles. The retainer rhythm becomes steady — usually quarterly engagement plus on-call support for unscheduled customer audits.
Year 6+ — Recertification + new growth
The three-year recertification cycle hits. By now most clients are in two or three certifications, often expanding into a new prime customer, a new process, or a new site. The relationship continues because the work continues.
This certificate serves as formal validation that American Quality Management operates an active, fully integrated Quality Management System (QMS) matching all requirements of ISO 9001:2015. We run, audit, and improve the same QMS logic we deploy for you.
We run the QMS we build for you
AQM holds ISO 9001:2015 Certification No. 1118558. We’re audited by the same kind of certification body that audits the manufacturers we work with. Our QMS architecture — documentation, internal audits, management review, corrective action, supplier control — is the same architecture we deploy for clients, refined across more than 25 years of quality management practice.
Most QMS consultants don’t hold their own ISO 9001 cert. Of the five regional and national competitors we profiled, only one made the same claim. Among Southern California QMS consultancies, we’re the only one we know of.
The certificate is the receipt. The QMS behind it is the proof.
Pillar 5 — The team
Founder-led, with named consultants you can reach directly
AQM is a founder-led consultancy. Connie Smith founded AQM in 2009 and leads the firm as Owner and Principal, personally engaging on client work alongside a small senior consulting team. You’ll meet your lead consultant on the first call — not a salesperson handing off to someone you’ve never spoken to — and that consultant becomes part of your team for the duration of the engagement, with defined goals, milestones, status reports, and action items on the same cadence you’d expect from an internal hire.
Connie Smith
Founder, Owner & PrincipalI’m Connie Smith — Concetta on my degrees and on my DNV credentials — and I founded American Quality Management (AQM) in 2009. I’ve led the firm as Owner and Principal ever since, bringing decades of quality management experience into the work. Since 2011 I’ve also held an active Lead Auditor credential through DNV, one of the major global certification bodies — so in parallel with consulting AQM’s clients toward their certifications, I conduct third-party audits for DNV. The audits my clients undergo are the same kind of audits I run from the other side of the table. That dual perspective is the reason AQM’s documentation tends to survive both the certification-body audit and the prime customer’s supplier audit that follows.
I specialize in AS9100 and ISO certifications across the three industries AQM serves — aerospace and defense, medical device, and general manufacturing. I hold a Master of Science in Quality Assurance from California State University, Dominguez Hills, and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Phoenix.
I work in English, Spanish, and Italian — useful when client operations span multilingual teams, which is common across the Southern California manufacturing base. Based in Montebello. Reachable by phone, email, or on LinkedIn .
Expanding senior consultants roster
Full consultant profiles and credentials will publish here as our senior team finalizes public attribution clearances.
Pillar 2 — Anchored in SoCal
Headquartered in Southern California. Clients served nationwide.
We’re headquartered in Montebello, California, where AQM has operated under Connie Smith’s ownership since 2009. The 25+ years of quality management experience our consultants bring spans the LA / Orange County / Inland Empire / San Diego supply base — long enough to have walked the supplier-development paths of most of the SoCal-relevant primes (Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Raytheon, Honeywell) and most of the cluster’s medical-device OEMs. On-site visits across SoCal come without travel cost. Most of our SoCal engagements include on-site time during the gap analysis, mock audits, and certification audit phases.
Engagements outside Southern California are typically remote with one to two on-site visits at key milestones. The cluster expertise is pattern recognition, not geography — the supplier-audit playbooks, typical findings, and typical RCCA paths we’ve seen carry to clients anywhere in the US.
Southern California Counties Served:
Address: Montebello, CA 90640
Primary phone: (323) 896-1803
Secondary phone: (323) 201-7266
Email: info@aqmauditing.com
Pillar 1 — The long game
The maintenance option, in plain terms
We’ve long called the post-certification phase of our work the maintenance option: we focus on maintaining your QMS and the audit cadence the standard expects, so your team can stay focused on the business. Most consultants disappear after the certificate is issued. We don’t — not because we lock clients into a multi-year agreement, but because the work keeps coming, and our consultants become part of your team for the duration of each engagement. Three patterns explain why the relationship usually continues.
1. The QMS needs maintenance
Every certified standard requires internal audits, management review, and corrective action work. Most quality teams are short-staffed. We run the audit cadence, prep the surveillance audits, and close the findings on a quarterly or annual retainer.
2. Flow-downs keep tightening
Primes update their supplier requirements every year or two — counterfeit-parts plans, configuration-management updates, new flow-downs from FAA or FDA changes. Each one is documentation work we already know how to do for your QMS.
3. Portfolio expansion
The general manufacturer adds ISO 14001 in year 2 and AS9100 in year 4. The aerospace shop adds Nadcap when they win a chemical-processing contract. The med-device firm adds ISO 9001 alongside ISO 13485. Each new certification is another six to nine months of consulting, with the institutional knowledge of the existing QMS already in our hands.
Across all three patterns, the QMS gets stronger because the relationship continues. Each round closes findings into corrective actions; each surveillance audit verifies the close-outs held; each new certification raises the bar on what the QMS has to do. We’ve never sold a stand-alone “continuous improvement” service — but a decade of disciplined audit-and-close cycles is what continuous improvement actually looks like.
About AQM, in your questions
AQM is intentionally lean. Connie Smith founded AQM in 2009 and continues to lead the firm as Owner and Principal, personally engaging on client work alongside a small senior consulting team. The same named consultants handle implementation, auditing, and training across our client base. We're not building a head-count-driven agency — the model relies on senior consultants doing the work, not handing it down to junior staff.
All seven: ISO 9001, ISO 14001, AS9100, AS9110, AS9120, ISO 13485, and Nadcap. Deep on each — we don't checkbox-list standards we touch occasionally. Most consultants specialize in one or two. Our portfolio breadth is the result of more than 25 years of QM experience working with clients who started with one cert and grew into more.
Headquartered in Montebello, California. We work across the US. SoCal engagements get on-site time without travel cost; out-of-state engagements are typically remote with one to two on-site visits at key milestones. The cluster expertise we developed in SoCal aerospace and medical-device supply chains carries to clients elsewhere — the playbooks and the findings patterns are recognizable across the industry, not just the region.
No. AQM is the consulting and auditing firm — we build, audit, and train your QMS. The certification audit itself is done by an accredited certification body (ANAB-accredited registrar for ISO and AS standards; PRI for Nadcap). We work alongside whichever registrar your customers recognize.
Yes — Cert No. 1118558. We've held our own ISO 9001:2015 certification for years. Most QMS consultants don't. We run the same QMS architecture we deploy for clients, audited by an accredited certification body on the same surveillance cadence our clients are on. The certificate is downloadable above.
Because they're named on the engagement, named on the audit report, named on the training certificate, and named in the contract. You meet your lead consultant on the first call — not a salesperson who'll hand you off to someone you haven't spoken with. Connie Smith, who founded AQM in 2009 and continues to lead it as Owner and Principal, is personally reachable; her full bio is in the team section above. Additional consultant bios will publish here as the team finalizes public attribution.
Get Started
If we're a fit, the work usually starts the same way
A first call, twenty to forty minutes. We listen to where you are, what your customers are requiring, and what the next twelve months look like for your QMS. We tell you honestly whether we're the right fit — and if we're not, who probably is. No quote on the call. If we're the right fit, a scoped proposal lands within a week.