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12º Congresso e Exposição Internacionais 

de Tecnologia da Mobilidade 

São Paulo, Brasil 

18 a 20 de novembro de 2003

 

 

AV. PAULISTA, 2073 - HORSA II - CJ. 2001 - CEP 01311-940 - SÃO PAULO – SP

 

 

 

SAE TECHNICAL 

2003-01-3690

 

PAPER SERIES

 E 

 
 
 

A Proposal for Product Qualification 

at the Automotive Industry 

 
 

Ciro Batista Rosa 

Visteon Sistemas Automotivos/Universidade de São Paulo 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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2003-01-3690 

A Proposal for Product Qualification at the Automotive Industry  

Ciro B. Rosa 

Universidade de São Paulo / Visteon Corporation 

 

Copyright © 2003 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc 

ABSTRACT 

 

This paper is a discussion of the requirements 

for product qualification at the automotive sector, and 
presents a more specific methodology to the current 
version of ISO/TS-16949 specification. A tool known 
as Value Analysis/Value Engineering (VA/VE) is used 
to determine the essential functions of the product 
qualification process. 

INTRODUCTION 

With the arrival of the so-called “newcomers”, 

the new car manufacturers, to the brazillian market on 
the 90´s, the need of world class suppliers to the 
automotive industry became more evident. The 
diversity of  car manufacturers, on the other hand, has 
significantly added complexity to the qualification 
processes required by them. Just to name a few of 
them, we have the QS 9000 for the american makers, 
VDA, for the germans, EAQF for french manifacturers. 
More recently, the market has seen the arrival of 
ISO/TS 16949, with its second edition being launched 
in 2002. The new standard came with the promise of 
unifying all automotive quality systems, and the same 
for the requirements for product qualification. 

In theory, the ISO/TS 16949 has accomplished its 

objectives. As stated in its paragraph 7.3.6.3, “The 
organization shall conform to a product and 
manufacturing process approval procedure recognized 
by the customer”. In real word, the confusion of 
different requirements continues.  

PRODUCT QUALIFICATION PROCESS 
BACKGROUND 

Perhaps the most used process for product 

qualification is the Production Part Approval process, 
PPAP in short, which is part of the QS 9000 quality 
system. Its 3

rd

 edition calls for 19 elements. If we 

consider the specific requirements of the Big Three 

(Ford, GM, DaimlerChrysler), the number of elements 
could easily reach much more. 

Although not being a product qualification 

process, the Advanced Product Quality Planning 
(APQP), which is also part of QS 9000, could be an 
interesting guideline to follow during process 
qualification. However, its 49 elements make the task 
even more dificult than in PPAP. 

The Verband der Automobilindustrie (VDA) has 

done a somewhat better job in terms of elements 
reduction. VDA-2 manual shows 11 elements to folow. 
An equivalence to the PPAP elements is shown on 
table 1.  

VDA Element

 

PPAP Equivalent

 

N/A = Not applicable 

1 I.2.2.13 

I.2.2.7, I.2.2.8, I.2.2.15 

3 I.2.1 

4 I.2.2.1, 

I.2.2.2 

5 I.2.2.3 

6 I.2.2.4, 

I.2.2.6 

7 I.2.2.5, 

I.2.2.12 

8 I.2.2.12 

9 I.2.2.18 

10 I.2.2.9 

11 I.2.2.19 

Table 1: VDA elements for product qualification and the 
equivalence with PPAP. 

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THE VALUE ANALYSIS/VALUE ENGINEERING 
METHODOLOGY 

The Value Analysis/Value Engineering (VA/VE) 

methodology  has been used to help on the understanding of 
what tasks are absolutely necessary to perform in order to 
have a comprehensive product qualification process. 

The first step in the process is to identify which 

Components form a product qualification process. The 
secon step is then to assign Functions to each component. 
In other words, one should briefly name, with a verb and a 
noun, these functions, which in turn describe what each 
component does in the process. Table 2 summarizes the 
components and functions. 

Component

 

Function (Verb+Noun)

 

Document Product

 

Specifications

 

Provide Evidences

 

Approve Appearance

 

Comply Regulation

 

Comply Norms

 

Evaluate Durability

 

Evaluate Supply

 

Evaluate Operation

 

Compare Measurements

 

Perform Experiments

 

Validate Manufacturing

 

Validate Assembly

 

Validate Design

 

Tests and Experiments

 

Validate Technology

 

Analyze Results

 

Document Product

 

Document Results

 

Provide Evidences

 

Reports

 

Generate Improvements

 

Support Event

 

Comply Regulation

 

Comply Norms

 

Document Results

 

Provide Evidences

 

Technical Warrant

 

Obtain Approval

 

Samples

 

Support Event

 

Component

 

Function (Verb+Noun)

 

Provide Evidences

 

 

Generate Standards

 

Table 2: Components and functions of the product 
qualification process. Note that some functions appear 
dupplicated, hence they can be optimized. 

The third step is then to “forget” the components we have 
named and work only with the functions. This step ensures 
that the proposal to be achieved with this methodology has 
no connection to te cuurent method, ensuring that old habits 
do not contaminate the new process. 

The functions are then put into a pictorial representation, 
where one an clearly see the relationship among functions. 
This representation is called Function Analysis System 
Technique (FAST).  

The last step of the methodology, and perhaps the most time 
consuming, is to eliminate functions which do not add value 
to the process and find out different alternatives to perform 
the remeining ones. 

THE NEW PRODUCT QUALIFICATION PROCESS 

After applying the VA/VE methodology, we came up 

with a list of  only 5 elements, which represent the very 
bottom line of the product qualification process. These are: 

1.  Design FMEA and Process FMEA, as per elements 

I.2.2.4 and I.2.2.6 of the PPAP manual. 

2.  Control Plan, as per element 7.5.1.1 of ISO/TS 16949 

and I.2.2.12 of the PPAP manual. 

3.  Total Validation Plan, which is an enhanced DVP&R of 

the APQP manual. 

4.  Appearance Approval Report (AAR), only if required 

by the product, as per element I.2.2.14 of the PPAP 
manual. 

5.  Part Submission Warrant (PSW), as per element I.2.2.13 

of the PPAP manual. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 

Would like to thank Prof. Dr. Lucas Moscato from the 
Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, for his continued 
support and motivation during the preparation of this 
article. 

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REFERENCES 

Shiba,S.;Grahan,A;Walden;D.  TQM:Quatro revoluções na 
gestão da qualidade. 1ST ED. PORTO ALEGRE. ARTES 
MÉDICAS. 1997. 

Harry,M.;Schroeder,R

Six Sigma:The breakthrough 

management strategy revolutionizing the world's top 
corportions.1

ST

 ED. NEW YORK. Doubleday. 2000. 

VDA. Verband der Automobilindustrie. Asseguramento da 
qualidade de fornecimentos. 3RD ED. Frankfurt am Main. 
VDA. 1998. Gerenciamento do sistema da qualidade na 
indústria autimobilística. NO. 2. 

Automotive industry action group. Quality system 
requirement:QS-9000. 3

RD

 ED. Southfield. AIAG. 1998. 

Automotive industry action group. Advanced product 
quality planning and control plan:APQP. 1

st

 ed. Southfield. 

AIAG. 1994. 

Automotive industry action group. Production part approval 
process:PPAP. 3

rd

 ed. Southfield. AIAG. 1999. 

Kaminski,P.C. Desenvolvendo produtos com 
planejamento,criatividade,qualidade. 1st ed. Rio de Janeiro. 
Livros Técnicos e Científicos. 2000. 

Spiegel,M.R. Estatística. 2nd ed. São Paulo. McGraw-Hill. 
1985. Schaum. 

Society of automotive engineering. Aerospace 
Standard:AS9000. Warrendale. SAE. 1998. 

Cole,M. et al. Integrating product and process planning. 
Warrendale. SAE. 1998. Proceedings of the 1998 IAM 
conference. 

Carney,T. Beyond APQP,a simplified integrated project 
management system for automotive suppliers. Warrendale. 
SAE. 1999. International congress and exposition. 

International Organization for Standardization. Information 
Technology – Software product evaluation – General 
overview. 1

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 ed. Genève. ISO/IEC. 1999. ISO/IEC 14598. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Mr. Rosa is a BS in Electrical Engineering from 

Unversidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil and an M. Eng. 
student of Automotive Engineering at the Universidade de 
São Paulo, Brazil. Other specialization includes: 

 

semiconductor manufacturing and failure analysis at Philips 
Semiconductors (The Netherlands and Germany), Ford 
Microelectronics (USA); Scanning Electron Microscopy 
and X-ray diffraction at Philips Electron Optics 

Applications Lab (The Netherlands) and Link Analytical 
(England); and SOI/CMOS semiconductor technology, at 
the Laboratory of Integrated Systems of the Universidade 
de São Paulo. He has been working on the last ten years at 
Visteon Corporation, where he currently holds the position 
of Program Team Manager, Electronics Manufacturing. 

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