What is APQP and PPAP? The 5 phases and 18 elements explained

A new part does not reach mass production because someone decides it is ready — it reaches production because a documented planning process proved it would consistently meet the customer's requirements, and a submission package was approved. Those two things have names in the automotive world: APQP is the planning process, and PPAP is the approval package. Get them right and a launch is boring in the best way; get them wrong and you are re-submitting samples at Level 3 the week before start of production.

This guide explains both core tools in plain English for anyone working to IATF 16949 — quality engineers, APQP/NPD teams, and suppliers to automotive OEMs and Tier-1s. If you want the wider picture first — where APQP and PPAP sit among all five core tools — start with the pillar guide, What is quality management software?, and come back here for the detail.

1. What are APQP and PPAP?

APQP — Advanced Product Quality Planning — is a structured, phase-gated method for planning and developing a product so it consistently satisfies the customer. Rather than a single form, it runs as a sequence of phases, each with entry and exit criteria, an owner, target and actual dates and a status, so a gate is explicit and an overdue one is visible rather than discovered at launch.

PPAP — Production Part Approval Process — is the standardized submission package (up to eighteen elements plus the Part Submission Warrant) that proves a supplier can make a part to specification at volume. It is submitted to the customer at a defined level, reviewed, and approved before the part is released for mass production.

The relationship is the whole point. APQP produces the DFMEA, PFMEA, process flow diagram, control plan and MSA plan. PPAP then assembles those same records — plus dimensional results, material and performance tests, initial process (SPC) studies and the PSW — into the pack the customer signs off. In a document-backed QMS these are not re-created for the submission; the PPAP package simply references the controlled documents APQP already authored. See APQP & PPAP and the FMEA and control plan guide.

2. Why APQP and PPAP exist

Both tools exist to move risk earlier. The cheapest place to fix a quality problem is on paper, before tooling is cut; the most expensive place is in a warranty claim on a car. APQP and PPAP force the questions forward:

• APQP asks "what could go wrong, and how will we prevent it?" before the part is made — through the DFMEA, PFMEA and the control plan, so special characteristics are identified and controlled from the start rather than discovered in production.
• PPAP asks "prove it" before volume — dimensional results on real parts, from a run at production intent, measured on calibrated gauges that passed MSA, with an initial capability study, so approval is based on evidence, not promises.
• Both create a controlled record — an auditable pack the customer, and later an IATF surveillance auditor, can trace. A launch without APQP/PPAP is a launch nobody can defend.

This is why the records cannot live as a loose folder of files. When an engineering change lands mid-launch, the affected FMEA, control plan and drawing must be re-versioned and, where the change is significant, the PPAP re-submitted — something only a version-controlled, document-backed system does reliably.

3. The 5 phases of APQP

APQP is conventionally described in five phases. Each phase has defined inputs and outputs, and the outputs of one become the inputs of the next — which is why running it as gated stages, not a checklist, matters.

The five APQP phases are gated: each phase's outputs — DFMEA, PFMEA, control plan, MSA plan — become the next phase's inputs, and together they become the PPAP submission.

4. The 18 PPAP elements and the PSW

A full PPAP package can require eighteen elements. Not every customer asks for every element at every submission level, but a mature supplier maintains all of them and submits what the level demands. In a document-backed QMS each is a controlled, versioned document carrying an approval status.

The PSW deserves its own mention: it is the one-page warrant at the front of the package that declares what was submitted, at which level, with what result, and carries the authorized signature. When people say a PPAP is "approved", they mean the PSW was signed. A QMS that stores the eighteen elements as controlled documents and the PSW as the summary keeps the package auditable rather than a folder of loose files.

5. PPAP submission levels

The customer decides how much of the package to actually submit through the submission level. All eighteen elements are still produced and retained; the level governs what is sent for review.

Level 3 is the common default for a new automotive part: samples plus the complete data set. A frequent mistake is assuming a lower level than the customer expects — always confirm the required level up front, because discovering at submission that Level 3 data was needed means assembling dimensional results and studies you should have been building all through APQP.

6. How APQP feeds PPAP

The two tools are one pipeline. Every PPAP element traces back to an APQP output, which is exactly why a disciplined APQP makes PPAP painless:

The thread that runs through all of it is the special characteristic: identified in the FMEA, carried onto the control plan, measured with an MSA-qualified, in-calibration gauge, and reported in the dimensional and initial-capability results. If that thread is unbroken in the software, PPAP is assembly; if it lives across disconnected spreadsheets, PPAP is a reconstruction project. See the gauge calibration and MSA guide for the measurement side.

7. Common pitfalls

Most PPAP pain is self-inflicted and predictable. These are the recurring traps worth checking your own process against.

8. How Fast Quality Software runs APQP and PPAP

Fast Quality Software is the automotive QMS of the Fast Suite, built in Pune by Improsys under the Fast Technology brand and deployed cloud or on-premise. It runs APQP and PPAP as connected, document-backed workflows:

9. Frequently asked questions