APQP at Kapture.io: Digitize the final stage

APQP: The Importance of Recording Supplier Agreements

You will agree with me that memory is fragile and selective. I can remember the pizza I ate on that trip to Italy a few years ago, but I can’t remember what I had for dinner on Monday. If we are that forgetful in our personal lives, what won’t be lost from memory in our industrial lives. Definitely, the loss of experience in organizations is a drama of our time.

Many of the young engineers enter the companies with the healthy intention of spending the minimum essential time in the workshop, in order to be able to jump to managerial positions, without knowing enough about the technical work. As a result, we continually lose the technicalknow-howof the companies.

A few years ago, it became “fashionable” to integrate airbags of all types inside the car: for the driver, passenger, seats, roofs, etc. The critical operation was to ensure the continuity of all electrical connections, so I had to audit the seat supplier’s controls to ensure 100% electrical continuity. I reviewed the process and validated the control plan proposed by the supplier.

After a couple of years I visited the supplier again and wanted to confirm that they were still performing the electrical control. But the supplier told me that the 100% control had been eliminated. How is it possible that the supplier had eliminated the control without being authorized, without informing me and in contravention of APQP (Advanced Product Quality Planning) standards? The supplier looked for the authorization paper and it turned out that I had signed the change a year ago. The truth is that I had completely forgotten about it.

This problem is especially important in the case of production start-up, at the end of the APQP process. We spend months and months developing and modifying a part, making it meet design requirements, but also appearance or functionality criteria as subtle as wrinkles or noise.

Our commitment to our customer is that at the start of the series life we take a “photo” of the piece, with the commitment that the thousands of pieces we will manufacture will be exactly the same as this first sample.

In this process, which is called PPAP or PSW, it is especially critical to have an exhaustive knowledge of what type of part we have agreed upon, to the point that it is common practice in many Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to request the shipment of sample parts that will be locked away in some obscure warehouse.

The problem is that keeping samples for years is not at all practical, because they will end up full of rust and dust, with difficulty to maintain access to information and without having an accessible traceability of the homologation conditions of the part. This is as long as we have a part adjusted to Design, that meets tolerances and customer appearance criteria.

But things become especially contentious when the OEM Original Manufacturer asks us for “special adjustments”. That is, when our customer asks us to move the process towards some trend, which ultimately favors the quality of the final assembly. That means that it is especially critical to keep records of the actions, derogation, etc. Because it is always possible that the trend may change and where before the Original Equipment Manufacturer wanted “small” parts, now he asks us for “normal” parts.