Advanced Product Quality Planning

Advanced Product Quality Planning
Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) is a quality framework used for developing new products in the
automotive industry. It can be applied to any industry and is similar in many respects to the concept
of design for six sigma (DFSS). The APQP process is described in AIAG manual 810-358-3003. Its
purpose is “to produce a product quality plan which will support development of a product or service that
will satisfy the customer.” It does this by focusing on:
 Up-front quality planning
 Evaluating the output to determine if customers are satisfied & support continual improvement
The Advanced Product Quality Planning process consists of four phases and five major activities along with
ongoing feedback assessment and corrective action as shown below.
A further indication of the APQP process is to examine the process outputs by phase. This is shown in the
table below:
The APQP process involves these major elements:

 Understand customer needs . This is done using voice of the customer techniques to determine
customer needs and using quality function deployment to organize those needs and translate them
into product characteristics/requirements.
 Proactive feedback & corrective action. The advance quality planning process provides
feedback from other similar projects with the objective of developing counter-measures on the
current project. Other mechanisms with verification and validation, design reviews, analysis of
customer feedback and warranty data also satisfy this objective.
 Design within process capabilities. This objective assumes that the company has brought
processes under statistical control, has determined its process capability and has communicated it
process capability to its development personnel. Once this is done, development personnel need
to formally determine that critical or special characteristics are within the enterprise’s process
capability or initiate action to improve the process or acquire more capable equipment.
 Analyze & mitigate failure modes. This is done using techniques such as failure modes and
effects analysis or anticipatory failure determination.
 Verification & validation. Design verification is testing to assure that the design outputs meet
design input requirements. Design verification may include activities such as: design reviews,
performing alternate calculations, understanding tests and demonstrations, and review of design
documents before release. Validation is the process of ensuring that the product conforms to
defined user needs, requirements, and/or specifications under defined operating conditions.
Design validation is performed on the final product design with parts that meet design intent.
Production validation is performed on the final product design with parts that meet design intent
produced production processes intended for normal production.
 Design reviews . Design reviews are formal reviews conducted during the development of a
product to assure that the requirements, concept, product or process satisfies the requirements of
that stage of development, the issues are understood, the risks are being managed, and there is a
good business case for development. Typical design reviews include: requirements review,
concept/preliminary design review, final design review, and a production readiness/launch review.
 Control special/critical characteristics. Special/critical characteristics are identified
through quality function deployment or other similar structured method. Once these characteristics
are understood, and there is an assessment that the process is capable of meeting these
characteristics (and their tolerances), the process must be controlled. A control plan is prepared to
indicate how this will be achieved. Control Plans provide a written description of systems used in
minimizing product and process variation including equipment, equipment set-up, processing,
tooling, fixtures, material, preventative maintenance and methods.
The Advanced Product Quality Planning process is supported by our Product Development Toolkit.

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Advanced Product Quality Planning

The APQP process involves these major elements:

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