Last month AIAG announced the creation of a Core Tools Forms Software project.
A recent survey showed that most the North American supply base, over 75%, rely on spreadsheet based approaches to complete several very technical forms related to product and process development (FMEA, Control Plan), measurement system capability evaluation (MSA), and product release (PPAP) that are part of the Advanced Product Quality Planning process. (You can view the original announcement of the project here.)
The real challenge comes when small suppliers, with limited resources, work to meet the basic industry standards and the Customer Specific Requirements (CSR’s) for these Core Tools forms. As a result, the target market for this project is small automotive suppliers. There are several existing software tools for the Core Tools (APQP/PPAP/FMEA/MSA) that are used by the OEMs and Tier 1s, but they are too complex and too expensive for small companies. The project team is focused on providing a solution that leverages an “Excel-like” front end supported by a robust database backend. The solution is being designed for the sub-tier suppliers in the international automotive supply chain with multi-lingual functionality, world class security, and global cloud hosting services so that response time is acceptable no matter where you are in the world.
The project team is seeking additional input with “AIAG Core Tools Software VOC Request - It Would Be Great if....” Any automotive Tier 2 to Tier N suppliers are encouraged to participate in the Voice of Customer Survey for this project at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/G9RXX6T.
Questions about the project or the VOC survey should be sent to John M. Cachat the AIAG Project Manager at jcachat@aiag.org.