Why Advanced Product Quality Planning ( APQP) is Important ? Unleash your Potentials as Quality Engineer!
Abstract :
APQP stands for Advanced Product Quality Planning. It is a methodology that originated in the automotive industry to ensure the development and production of high-quality products that meet customer requirements and expectations.
During the product development lifecycle, quality tools are implemented in various phases to facilitate cross functional collaboration across the supply chain. This allows early detection of problems before they become too capital and resource draining. These tools help:
- Identify project risk
- Develop a mitigation plan
- Review design for manufacturing feasibility
- Identify and prepare suppliers for upcoming phases
- Create and validate the outcome to ensure absolute customer satisfaction
Keywords
Advanced Product Quality Planning, APQP, Manufacturing, Supplier, Customer, Planning, Quality, IATF
Learning Outcomes
After undergoing this article you will be able to understand the following :
1. What's Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) ?
2. Why APQP is Important ?
3. What's the phases of APQP?
4. What are the key elements of the APQP process?
5. What's the key benefits of APQP?
6. What's the applicability of APQP?
7. How to implement APQP and the Core Tools?
8. When to Apply APQP?
9. Conclusions
10. FAQs
References
1. What's Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) ?
Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) is a structured process aimed at ensuring customer satisfaction with new products or processes.
APQP has existed for decades in many forms and practices. Originally referred to as Advanced Quality Planning (AQP), APQP is used by progressive companies to assure quality and performance through planning. Ford Motor Company published the first Advanced Quality Planning handbook for suppliers in the early 1980’s. APQP helped Ford suppliers develop appropriate prevention and detection controls for new products supporting the corporate quality effort. With lessons learned from Ford AQP, the North American Automotive OEM’s collectively created the APQP process in 1994 and then later updated in 2008. APQP is intended to aggregate the common planning activities all automotive OEM’s require into one process. Suppliers utilize APQP to bring new products and processes to successful validation and drive continuous improvement.
APQP supports the early identification of change, both intentional and incidental. These changes can result in exciting new innovation supporting customer delight. When not managed well they translate to failure and customer dissatisfaction. The focus of APQP is utilization of tools and methods for mitigating the risks associated with change in the new product or process.
2. Why Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) important ?
APQP supports the never ending pursuit of continuous improvement. The first three sections of APQP focus on planning and prevention and make up 80% of the APQP process. The fourth and fifth sections support the remaining 20% of APQP and focus on validation and evidence. The fifth section specifically allows an organization to communicate learnings and provide feedback to develop standard work and processes. A list of APQP benefits are:
- Directing resources by defining the vital few items from the trivial many
- Promote early identification of change
- Intentional (what is being changed on purpose to bring value to the customer)
- Incidental (environments, customer usage, degradation and interfaces)
- Avoid late changes (post release) by anticipating failure and preventing it
- Fewer design and process changes later in the product development process
- On-time quality product at lowest cost
- Multiple options for mitigating the risk when found earlier
- Higher capability of verification and validation of a change
- Improved collaboration between Design of the Product and Process
- Improved Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFM/A)
- Lower cost solutions selected earlier in the process
- Legacy capture and reuse, advancement of Tribal Knowledge and standard work creation and utilization
So it can be summarised that APQP establishes clear lines of communication between customers and suppliers to define project specifications that translate into more comprehensive deliverables such as:
- Robust product design
- Lean manufacturing process to produce part within cost and on-time
- Design Validation Plan to ensure customer satisfaction using product testing
- Ensure supplier preparedness before start of production
Importance of APQP for Clients
- Finished products received are of high quality
- Speeds up new product to market time
- Establish transparent communication with the supplier.
- Establish confidence in a supplier’s delivery.
- Key part of
Importance of APQP for Suppliers
- Ensures client satisfaction
- Creates structure for standardized systems and processes
- Early detection of problems before they get out of hand
- Better communication across the supply chain throughout the product development process.
3. What's the Phases of APQP?
There are five concurrent phases and a pre-planning stage involved in the APQP process. It involves the Cross Functional Team (CFT) of engineers, manufacturers, marketers, and other core functions so communication and collaboration are important. A project manager will be responsible for managing and planning the process.
1. Planning Phase
- Identify critical to quality (CTQ) subsystems
2. Product Design & Development Phase
- Design risk analysis (DRA)
- Identify critical characteristics (CC) and significant characteristics (SC)
- Design verification plan & report (DVP&R)
3. Process Design & Development Phase
- Technical review
- Process flow diagram (PFD)
- Process failure mode effects analysis (PFMEA)
- Control plan
4. Product & Process Validation Phase
- Inspection plan
- Measurement system analysis (MSA)
- Standard work instructions (SWI)
5. On-Going Production, Use & Post-Delivery Service Production Phase
- Lessons learned
- Continuous improvement
- Reduce variation
4. What are the key elements of the APQP process?
5. What's the Key benefits of APQP ?
- Improved product quality - APQP’s rigorous risk assessments, design and process FMEAs (Failure Mode Effects Analysis), Control Plans, and production trials prevent a host of quality problems before parts are mass produced.
- Enhanced customer satisfaction - To put it simply, higher quality products result in greater customer satisfaction and happiness. When customers are satisfied, their relationships with manufacturers and suppliers improve.
- Increased efficiency - Quality problems in the development and manufacturing process hinder efficiency and time-to-market. APQP provides a reliable framework to catch and address these problems early to reduce the need for reworks.
- Reduced costs - Quality problems, hangups in the development and manufacturing process, reworks, product returns, warranty claims, and more all result in greater costs to the manufacturer. APQP drastically reduces these issues to save significant costs.
- Improved supplier relations - By factoring in a detailed understanding of customer requirements and expectations, APQP allows suppliers to better understand their customers which leads to improved customer/supplier relationships and a more collaborative working relationship.
- Better risk management - APQP’s risk assessment processes allow suppliers and manufacturers to identify, address, and develop measures to mitigate potential quality issues early.
- Improved process control - the combined methodologies outlined above in combination with APQP’s statistical process control (SPC) processes allow suppliers and manufacturers to monitor/control the production process in even greater detail.
The business benefits of implementing APQP include:
- Product conformity
- Improved quality of product
- Improved customer service
- Improved customer satisfaction
- Faster time to market
- Transparent communication
- On-time products at a low cost
- Improved risk mitigation
- Improved Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFM/A)
- Lower cost solutions selected earlier in the process
- Necessary changes identified earlier
APQP benefits OEMs dealing with multiple supply chains and suppliers looking to achieve part approval and compliance.
6. What's the Applicability of APQP ?
APQP applies to both New Product Introductions and Existing products.
For the former, the emphasis is on learning from past new product development experiences.
The latter focuses on how continuous improvement and defect prevention have been implemented in the suppliers’ manufacturing processes.
6. How to implement APQP and the Core Tools?
The aim of APQP is to enable an organization to achieve one task, and that is to develop a product quality plan for developing and producing products aligned with customer requirements. According to APQP standards, this planning uses a five-phase process that includes:
- Product Planning and Quality Program Definition – In cases when the customer requires the introduction of a new product, or changes to an existing one, preliminary planning is the first step, far before discussion on the product design or redesign. The aim of this phase is to clearly define customer requirements and expectations regarding the product to be designed or redesigned.
- This phase includes obtaining necessary information and data to determine customer requirements. Once the requirements are identified, the quality program can be defined. The result of this phase is product design, reliability, and quality goals.
- Product Design and Development – The goal of this phase is to finish the product design, as well as the feasibility assessment.
- Process Design and Development – This phase covers planning of the manufacturing process for the new or improved product. The goal is to consider product specifications, product quality, and production costs when designing and developing the production process. The process must be able to operate efficiently and produce the expected quantities to keep up with consumer demands.
- Validation of Product and Process – This is the test phase for validating the manufacturing process and the final product. The end results of this phase include confirming the capability and reliability of the manufacturing process, and the product quality acceptance criteria. Trial production runs are made, and product output is tested to confirm the effectiveness of the deployed manufacturing approach. Any needed adjustments are reconciled before moving on to the next phase.
- Production Launch, Assessment, and Improvement – The full-scale production launch occurs in this phase, with an emphasis on evaluating and improving processes. Activities such as reducing process variations, identifying issues, and starting corrective actions to support continual improvement are mainstays in this phase. Collecting and assessing customer feedback, as well as collecting data related to process efficiency and quality planning effectiveness, is important in this phase.
The Automotive Core Tools, range from management overviews to detailed implementation workshops, providing a step-by-step practical approach.
The core tools are
APQP
Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) and Control Plans reduce the complexity of product quality planning.
Control Plan
Control Plan provides a consistent set of requirements for customers and suppliers throughout the life of the project.
PPAP
Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) is the industry standard that ensures engineering design and product specification requirements are met.
FMEA
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a tool used to identify and address failure modes in products and processes.
SPC
Statistical Process Control (SPC) describes several basic and advanced statistical methods to ensure your process improvements are more effective.
MSA
Measurement System Analysis (MSA) measurement data monitors nearly every process. As data quality improves, decision quality improves.
7. When to Apply APQP?
It’s also important to know when and how to implement APQP to maximize benefits from the process. APQP is typically used for New Production Introductions (NPIs) when OEMs and suppliers are working together to develop a new product. It supports product development by using risk-based tools to focus on the design, service, quality control and continuous improvement of a product. Identifying risks early allows teams to act before waiting for a failure to occur.
APQP should also be applied if a product or process is changing after its release, ensuring the risk of the change is managed successfully and doesn’t create any problems.
During the product development lifecycle, quality tools are implemented in various phases to facilitate cross functional collaboration across the supply chain. This allows early detection of problems before they become too capital and resource draining. These tools help:
- Identify project risk
- Develop a mitigation plan
- Review design for manufacturing feasibility
- Identify and prepare suppliers for upcoming phases
- Create and validate the outcome to ensure absolute customer satisfaction
Ans : Despite having a well-formulated APQP checklist, it can be difficult to implement it because of the complexity of staging new projects and the unique composition of organizations. Here are some of the most common problems that could arise during any stage of the process.
- Resource allocation – On top of the difficulty of allotting specific equipment and supplies for a new product, companies often struggle with creating a team dedicated to the APQP for an upcoming project, mainly because most of their employees are already working on something else. Scheduling tasks judiciously and providing support can help mitigate this issue.
- Communication breakdowns – While miscommunication is expected in cross-functional working environments, it can and should be minimized by establishing clearly defined roles and well-described responsibilities.
- Resistance to change – Establishing new workflows and adopting different strategies are hard mainly because people are more comfortable and confident with what they are used to. Engaging workers through open communication and empowering them through continuous learning can help them navigate these changes.
- Sustainability – Quality deteriorates because of a decline in discipline when following the rigorous process. Monitoring and regular audits prevent workers from slacking off or neglecting even the smallest detail in any APQP stage.
- Data management – The most challenging of all is tracking the information exchanged among teams and workflow documentation. Digitization is the best way to handle this problem.
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