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We are having an internal debate in our company on when the APQP process starts. Does APQP start as soon as Sales receives the RFQ from the supplier, or does APQP start when Sales receives the official P.O. from the customer? The AIAG manual (as far as I can tell) assumes that the supplier has the order and needs to proceed to develop the product. In reality, a supplier must first develop a design/price proposal (using the same cross functional team input defined in APQP) to be proposed to the customer along side other supplier proposals . . . where in the end the may not result in an order from the customer. The question is . . . how much APQP type effort is devoted to developing the proposal before the order is received? I lean toward pulling the official APQP start to the RFQ phase . . . but again this is different from how AIAG defines the process.
I am curious to find out how other companies deal with this situation.
I am curious to find out how other companies deal with this situation.
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