IATF Training Portal

30th Jun 2022 Posted By Admin

PPAP - In A Nutshell

IATF16949 is the most stringent QMS standard presently available.

IATF16949 recommends the usage of 5 core tools, these core tools have separate manuals as below,

1) APQP – Advanced Product Quality Planning – 107 page manual

2) PPAP – Production Part Approval Process – 68 page manual

3) FMEA – Failure Mode & Effect Analysis – 141 page manual

4) MSA – Measurement System Analysis – 232 page manual

5) SPC – Statistical Process Control – 221 page manual

Reading all these stuff, then trying to understand the concept, logic & maths behind these are quite difficult & it takes a longer time. Again the time taken varies person to person considering their age, qualification, experience & passion. After understanding, implementing these, is again a challenging task.

To support everyone who is interested in these subjects, i have developed “Nutshells” that will give a bigger picture. With this attaching some important "Nutshells".

Let us dive-in further into PPAP in this article.

So, What is PPAP?

Once a supplier is ready with the product & (mfg.) process design, they will run the product for the first time. This run is called as “Significant Production Run”. This run will be kept as small as possible to minimize losses, at the same time as big as possible to understand the capability & capacity (through statistics & projection).

PPAP recommends “300 pieces” or “8 hours production volume” or “volume as-per the discretion of the customer” for this “Significant Production Run”

During this run, customer cannot be at your premises & monitor how the progress happens to ascertain the supplier’s capability & capacity. Hence PPAP guides the suppliers on conducting such a “Significant production run” and submit “Parts produced” during this run, along-with “certain documents”.

Customer can clearly understand the supplier’s capability & capacity by evaluating the parts and the documents submitted to them. Such an evaluation will help the Customers to decide on the further course of action.

Further course of actions can be,

1) Rejecting the PPAP submitted & request for a re-submission

2) Interim approval (run with some deviations)

3) Accepting the PPAP

Then, how do you know, what documents you need to submit along-with parts?

Customer will inform a submission level, ranging from one (1) to five (5). If nothing is informed by the customer, the default level is three (3).

Submission level three (3) means, that you have to submit all the 18 documents, as prescribed in the PPAP manual. There will be some documents “Not applicable” to you, considering the “type of product” & “design responsibility”. If you are not responsible for the "product design", straight-away first four documents are “not applicable” to you. If the parts you supply is not an “appearance item”, then “appearance approval report” (AAR) is not applicable to you. Any item that is visible to the naked eye of end user / buyer is an appearance item (Egs: Fuel tank in motorbikes, Car doors)

Customer may demand Level-5 for highly stable & reliable suppliers (no need to submit anything with parts, need to retain everything at supplier premises).

See the below nutshell that details all the eighteen documents & some key aspects of PPAP.

Beginners can use this to have an overall idea prior to drill deep. Experts can use this as a ready reckoner.

My nutshell on other complicated subjects will be published one by one.

Keep in touch & keep following.