PPAP

PPAP is where automotive work front-loads its cost, and the quoting argument is about how much of that load the price acknowledges. The submission package can include dimensional results, material certs, process flow diagrams, control plans, measurement system studies, capability studies on designated characteristics, and an appearance approval, scaled by the level the customer specifies. Assembling it consumes engineering and quality hours, machine time for the sample run, and calendar weeks of back-and-forth, all before the program earns anything.

The estimating discipline is to price it as its own package and then decide openly how it amortises. On the site’s worked spool valve the QA and PPAP burden lands at $0.019 a piece, nearly invisible, because 1,200,000 pieces a year forgive almost any fixed cost. The identical obligation on a 20,000 piece program is 60 times heavier per piece, and a quote that carried the automotive customer’s requirements at a non-automotive price has already lost the margin it thinks it has.

The recurring trap is re-submission. Engineering changes, process moves, supplier changes and lapses in production can each reopen the approval, and a 6 year program will see several. A quote that priced one submission has under-priced the program by however many the change traffic generates.

The related gate that follows approval, proving the quoted cycle in front of the customer, is run at rate, and the 2 together are why the line-by-line build in how to quote a machined part treats quality obligations as priced lines rather than boilerplate.