White Paper "APQP: Consolidating Knowledge, Avoiding Errors, Lowering Development Costs"
Advanced product-quality planning (APQP) is a systematic methodology for planning quality. Cross-divisional teams with specialist knowledge in key areas such as production, design, purchasing, and logistics employ instruments to ensure quality in the product before series production starts. The methodology creates a product-quality plan that you can use to develop your products faster, more cost-effectively, and more reliably. APQP at its core is not a new methodology. It is a framework that optimizes existing product- development processes.
The knowledge and experience from all relevant departments are consolidated to close off sources of errors and lower development costs. It usually does not require any elaborate implementation process. Instead, it needs isolated adjustments that, in our experience, pay off very quickly.