What is PPAP?
The Production Part Approval Process or PPAP is an industry-standard guideline for the Automotive supply chain and is governed by the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG). The PPAP process has been designed to ensure that all suppliers meet the quality requirements of automotive parts, as defined by customers.
What is the need for PPAP?
- To provide, evidence that all customer engineering design and specification requirements are properly understood by the suppliers
- To demonstrate that the manufacturing process has the potential to produce product that consistently meets all the requirements during an actual production run at the quoted production rate
- Helps in managing the engineering changes and ensure the conformance of the product to customers requirement
- Establish a controlled manufacturing processes to maintain consistent quality
What are the benefits of PPAP?
- Helps to maintain design integrity
- Identify issues early and easy to take effective corrective actions
- Reduce warranty charges and reduce cost of poor quality
- Helps to manage the supplier changes
- Prevents use of unapproved and nonconforming parts
- Easy to monitor suppliers’ quality to ensure continuous improvement
When is PPAP required?
- A new part is introduced
- There is engineering changes on the existing part
- New Tool is developed, or existing tool is transferred, replaced or refurbished
- Tool is inactive for more than one year
- There is a change in construction material
- Sub-supplier or material source change
- Change in part production process
- Parts produced at a new or additional location
- Correction in previous discrepancy
How long will it take to complete a PPAP?
Many factors determine the PPAP approval time and it can be sometimes time-consuming due to the huge number of parts, suppliers, the number of materials in each part and so on. Many companies have outsourced their PPAP process to experts such as ComplianceXL, who can deliver dedicated PPAP teams working as an extended arm to clients.
When is PPAP required?
- Change in source of subcontracted part material or services
- Correction in previous discrepancy
- Engineering changes
- Production from new or modified tools or change in process
- Use of alternate or optional materials
- Change of manufacturing location
- Initial submission for new item-vendor combination development
