what is ppap

PPAP stands for Production Part Approval Process. It is a standardized process used in the aerospace and automotive industries to establish confidence in suppliers and their production processes. The PPAP process consists of 18 elements that may be required for approval of production level parts, and it verifies that the supplier understands all customer engineering design specifications and requirements and that the process is capable of consistently producing products meeting those requirements during an actual production run at the quoted production rate. PPAP is important for validating the suppliers ability, understanding customer requirements, establishing a reliable and repeatable process, reducing cost, maintaining expectations and compliance on both sides, and ensuring quality assurance and reproducibility. It is a valuable tool for ensuring better communication between a customer and supplier, with the aim of reducing turnbacks and revisions to the product or process. The PPAP package includes documentation of various cross-functional tools and documents the ability of the supplier to meet all customer requirements.