Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP)

Introduction to 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 1980s. 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 OEMs collectively created the APQP process in 1994 and then later updated it in 2008. APQP is intended to aggregate the common planning activities all automotive OEMs require into one process. Suppliers utilize APQP to bring new products and processes to successful validation and drive continuous improvement.

?What is Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP)

The primary goal of product quality planning is to facilitate communication and collaboration between engineering activities. A Cross-Functional Team (CFT), involving marketing, product design, procurement, manufacturing, and distribution, is used in the APQP process. APQP ensures the?Voice of the Customer (VOC)?is clearly understood, translated into requirements, technical specifications, and special characteristics. The product or process benefits are designed through prevention.

APQP supports the early identification of change, both intentional and incidental. These changes can result in exciting innovations supporting customer delight. When not managed well they translate to failure and customer dissatisfaction. The focus of APQP is the utilization of tools and methods for mitigating the risks associated with a change in the new product or process.

?Why Implement Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP)

APQP supports the never-ending pursuit of continuous improvement. The first three sections of APQP focus on planning and prevention and makeup 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

o??Intentional (what is being changed on purpose to bring value to the customer)

o??Incidental (environments, customer usage, degradation, and interfaces)

·???????Avoid late changes (post-release) by anticipating failure and preventing it

o??Fewer design and process changes later in the product development process

·???????On-time quality product at the 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

When to?Apply Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP)

APQP facilitates communication between the supply chain and the organization/customer. Requirements that translate into more detailed specifications are clarified and decomposed to more detail as the process continues. APQP is used in 2 ways:

1.?New Product Introduction (NPI)?

APQP supplements product development processes by adding a focus on risk as a substitute for failure. This allows the team to take action on the risk instead of having to wait for failure to occur in testing or worse, in the hands of the customer. APQP utilizes risk-based tools that focus on all aspects of product and process design, service, process quality control, packaging, and continuous improvement. Each application of APQP may be unique to a previous application because of the percentage of new content, changes to current off-the-shelf technology, or past failure history.

2. Product or Process Change (Post Release)

APQP follows a product or process change outside of Product Development and assures the risk of change is managed successfully by preventing problems created by the change.

How to Implement Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP)

APQP is comprised of one pre-planning stage and five concurrent phases. Once begun, the process never ends and is often illustrated in the Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) cycle. PDSA was made famous by W. Edwards Deming. Each section is aligned with analytical risk discovery tools and techniques. Finding risk in product and process development is more desirable than finding late failure. The APQP Sections are defined below:

Section 0: Pre-Planning

APQP begins with assumptions, concepts, and past knowledge. Bookshelf knowledge and standard work practices are listed as well as areas where significant change is expected. This section compiles the inputs into Section 1 – Plan and Define.

Section 1: Plan and Define

Section 1 links customer expectations, wants needs, and desires to requirements. Plan Development will assure the output of this section is satisfactory product quality. Resource planning, process, and product assumptions are made. A list of preliminary special characteristics and design/reliability goals are also established.

Section 2: Product Design and Development

The focus in Section 2 is on product design and development. Geometry, design features, details, tolerances, and refinement of special characteristics are all reviewed in a formal Design Review. Design verification through prototypes and testing are also part of this section. Tools that typically provide great benefit in this section are?DFM/A,?Design Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (DFMEA), and?Design Verification Plan and Report (DVP&R).

Section 3: Process Design and Development

Section 3 explores manufacturing techniques and measurement methods that will be used to bring the design engineer’s vision into reality. Process Flow Charts,?Process Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (PFMEA), and?Control Plan Methodology?are examples of tools used in this section.

Section 4: Product and Process Validation

Validation of the process quality and volume capabilities is the focus of Section 4. Statistical Process Control (SPC), Measurement Systems Analysis (MSA), and?Process Capability Studies?are introduced in this section. Product Part Approval Process (PPAP) is ready for submission and production begins upon approval.

Section 5: Feedback Assessment and Corrective Action

Section 5 explores learnings from the ongoing manufacturing process, RPN reduction, corrective actions (both internal and external),?Eight Disciplines of Problem Solving (8D), and the capture of information pertinent for future use.

Examples of Where to Incorporate APQP:

·???????Develop Requirements from Voice of the Customer (VOC) using?Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

·???????Develop a Product Quality Plan integrated into Program / Project Timeline

·???????Translate percentage of new content into Product and Process Assumptions

·???????Product design activities communicating special characteristics or to the process design activity, before design release this may include new geometry, shape, parts, tighter tolerances, and new materials linking the DFMEA to PFMEA

·???????Develop test plans (DVP&R)

·???????Use of formal Design Review to track progress

·???????Plan, acquire, and install appropriate process equipment and tooling based on design tolerances provided by the product design source

·???????Assembly and Manufacturing personnel communicating suggestions of ways to better assemble a product (DFM/A)

·???????Establish adequate Quality Controls for Special Characteristics or Key Characteristics features of a product or parameters of a process, which still risk potential failure

·???????Performing Stability and Capability studies on special characteristics to understand the variation present and predict future performance with?Statistical Process Control (SPC)?and Process Capability (PPK and CPK)