Advanced product quality planning (APQP)
Advanced product quality planning (APQP) is a five-phase framework for launching new products with quality engineered in from the start: planning, product design and development, process design and development, product and process validation, and production launch with feedback. Developed by the North American automotive industry, APQP ties engineering, quality, and suppliers to defined deliverables at each phase so problems surface during development, not after start of production.
Examples
Phase timing on a casting program: An EV startup awards a die-cast motor housing in January against an October start of production. The APQP plan puts tool kickoff in February, process FMEA review in April, run-at-rate trials in August, and PPAP submission six weeks before launch, leaving room for one corrective loop.
Catching a defect on paper: During phase 3, a supplier's process FMEA flags porosity risk on a sealing surface. Adding vacuum assist to the die costs $14,000 up front and $0.06 per part, versus an estimated 6% scrap rate (about $38,000 a year at 120,000 units) had the failure mode reached production.
Definition
APQP came out of the American auto industry in the late 1980s, when Ford, GM, and Chrysler standardized through AIAG how hundreds of suppliers should develop parts. The five phases run alongside the customer's new product introduction timeline, and each closes on deliverables: design goals and a preliminary bill of materials in phase 1, a design FMEA and verification plan in phase 2, process flows, process FMEA, and control plans in phase 3, capability studies and measurement system analysis in phase 4, and stabilized production with reduced inspection in phase 5.
The exit gate is the production part approval process: the evidence package proving the supplier's process makes conforming parts at rate. Aerospace runs the same logic through AS9145, with first article inspection in place of PPAP, which is why procurement leaders moving from automotive to aerospace find the framework familiar under different names.
APQP fails when it is treated as paperwork assembled in the two weeks before launch. It works when deliverables start at sourcing kickoff and suppliers show evidence at each gate, not a binder at the end. Procurement teams coordinate the commercial side of a launch in LightSource, keeping supplier quotes, tooling timelines, and qualification status in one place as the gates close.
Related Terms
Production Part Approval Process (PPAP)
Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA)
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