Meet the FOD Force – A Cultural Initiative with Serious Impact
AS9100 isn’t just a badge of compliance – it’s a mindset. It’s about embedding a quality-first culture that’s active, aware, and accountable. At Datalink Electronics, we understand that fostering this culture requires more than process documentation or audit readiness. It requires people – engaged, aligned, and empowered.
Enter The FOD Force – a creative campaign designed to bring the core pillars of AS9100 to life through the power of character and story.
Each fictional hero in the FOD Force represents a fundamental element of our quality system:
- Captain FOD: The proactive sentinel of Risk Management, identifying threats before they escalate. His mantra? “Anticipate. Eliminate. Safeguard.”
- The Strain: Focused entirely on Conformity, she detects deviations and ensures strict adherence to specification and process.
- SpecCheck: The ultimate champion of Process Control, monitoring every stage of production with unwavering precision.
And where there are heroes, there’s always a challenger. Enter The Clutterbuck – a chaotic counterforce to our quality-first culture. As a fictional antagonist in the campaign, he embodies everything that threatens production: disorder, distraction, and the illusion that standards don’t matter. His character is a reminder that non-conformance often begins with small oversights – and that it takes real vigilance to keep clutter and confusion at bay.
These characters aren’t just mascots – they’re meaningful representations of real behaviours we expect and value across our teams. Through posters, training events, inspection drives and digital messaging, they act as prompts to reinforce best practices in contamination control, traceability, and disciplined execution.
Most importantly, the campaign reminds us that every person on the floor is a hero in their own right – with the power to protect products, prevent issues, and promote excellence.
As we continue our journey to AS9100 certification, The FOD Force campaign has provided a unifying theme that connects individual responsibility with company-wide standards.
At Datalink, culture and compliance go hand in hand – and initiatives like The FOD Force prove that even the most technical requirements can be championed with creativity, clarity, and purpose.
