APQP - Advanced Product Quality Planning

APQP (Advanced Product Quality Planning) is a standard designed to support the framing of the launch of a new product as well as the reduction of costs since the product definition phase.

Increased product complexity, reduced implementation time and increased competition have a growing influence on the cooperation between car manufacturers and their supply chain. This manifests as intense interactions between the customer and the supplier throughout the product development process, which leads to volume production.

The approach in the form of a standard project management in the automotive industry was transposed as AIAG - APQP standard, but also the VDA developed the Maturity Level Assurance (MLA, in 2005), which was translated into English in 2010 to structure and support this process.

The launch of the new product is announced in the APQP in five phases and in each of them the inputs and outputs are defined.

Thus, the first phase is that of Planning and defining the program. They are considered variables that depend on the market context, the needs of the consumers.

At the end of the first phase, the obtained results (design objectives, quality and reliability objectives) become input elements for the Verification phase of product design and development. After the products are developed we will proceed to step three: Designing and developing the manufacturing process.

As an exit from this step but also an entry for step four Product validation and process and production feedback we find P-FMEA, the Pre-series Control Plan, MSA, the preliminary process capability plan.

The last but not the last one is step five Launching, evaluation and corrective action, this step having the role of helping us to continuously improve.

The results of this step and of the previous ones help us to have a small variation, an improved customer satisfaction, as well as an effective use of the best practices.

In recent years, many companies in the automotive industry have adopted and customized APQP as their own standard for managing the design and launch of new products.