Advance Product Quality Planning

The standard requires systems to be in place to ensure management of appropriate activities during concept development, prototype, and production according to customer advanced product quality planning and control plan manual or project management manual. 

Product realization in the automotive industry is either called advanced product quality planning (APQP) or project management. In terms of their objectives there is no difference. In terms of the mechanics there may be some differences, depending on the methodologies employed by the organization. 

The standard requires the supplier to use tools and techniques identified in the customer reference manual on advanced product quality planning. 

Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) (1994), Advanced Product Quality Planning and Control... 

The FMEA methodology is now extensively used in a variety of industries including semiconductor processing, food service, plastics, software and health care, where it is sometimes integrated into Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) to provide a primary design and process risk mitigation tool. 

Advance Product Quality Planning (APQP) is a framework of procedures and techniques used to develop quality products. APQP must be audited and registered under ISO/TS 16949... 

ISO TS 16949 can be interpreted differently for the individual cases of application. This is why automobile manufacturers have since defined standards in order to guarantee quality in product development. Later, the American manufacturers such as Ford, GM or Chrysler met at AIAG to define joint requirements for quality management. In Germany, similar standards and requirements were developed under the umbrella of VDA. The aim was to define processes for the development as well as planned advanced product quality improvement measures, APQP (advanced product quality planning according to AIAG). 

Fig. 2.5 Advanced product quality planning (Reference APQP AIAG [9] 4th Edition)...

Advanced product qualify planning and control plan reference manual ANFIA evaluation of quality systems - checklist ANFIA evaluation of quality systems - guidelines for use Benchmarking, Sylvia Coding (Gower, 1998)... 

DaimlerChrysler supplements these requirements with its own procedure for new-product introduction. DaimlerChrysler characterizes its quality efforts two ways — advance and current. DaimlerChrysler refers to efforts to anticipate problems as "Advance Quality Planning" (or AQP). As the name implies, the hope is to head off problems before they happen. Current quality efforts focus mostly on problems in assembly plants. They also address continuous improvement after a component is in production. Suppliers are continuously graded on their performance, and low performers are subject to corrective action, even if the parts they provide are "carryover" parts that have no design changes. 

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