QAP preparation: where the hours go and how to cut them

The purchase order has arrived. Material is booked, the shop wants to start, and the buyer's letter says manufacture may not begin until your quality assurance plan is approved. So the QA head puts everything else aside, opens the last QAP that looked similar, and starts editing.

If you supply valves, fittings, castings, forgings, pressure vessels or heat exchangers to public sector buyers, EPC contractors or process plants, QAP preparation is part of almost every order. It looks like filling in a table. In practice it takes longer than anyone plans for, it comes back with comments, and the commitments it contains decide how much work waits for you at the end of the order, when the dossier is due.

What goes into a QAP?

The buyer usually sets the format. As one published example, BHEL's guidelines to vendors for preparation of a quality assurance plan say the vendor prepares and submits the QAP after order placement for approval, using the enclosed format, and that no deviation from the reference document is acceptable. They ask for:

• a header on every page with the purchase order number and date, the project, the product, and a unique QAP number with its revision and date
• four stages: raw materials and bought-out items; in-process control and inspection; final assembly, inspection and testing; painting, preservation and packing
• for each component, the characteristics to be checked, the class (minor, major or critical), the type of check and the quantum of check, such as 100%, per heat or a sample
• the reference document and acceptance norms for each check, citing national, international or buyer standards and approved drawings, not "vendor's standard practice"
• the format of record, such as a test certificate, lab report or inspection report
• who performs, witnesses and verifies each check: you, your sub-vendor, or the buyer's inspection agency
• a mark against each record you will submit, and your signature and stamp on every page

Your buyers' formats will differ in detail. The structure is close to this almost everywhere, and so is the work behind it.

Where do the hours in QAP preparation actually go?

Very little of the time goes on typing. The rows are familiar. The hours sit in four other places.

Reading the order. The requirements are spread across the purchase order, the technical specification, the buyer's standards, the datasheets and the drawings. A heat treatment condition in one place, an extra impact test in another, a buyer standard that overrides the material standard in a third. Someone has to read all of it and find what is different from the last order.

Resolving references. Every acceptance norm has to point to a clause the buyer will accept. "As per drawing" is fine only if the drawing actually states it. Finding the right standard, its edition and the clause takes longer than writing the row.

Agreeing who does what. Which checks your sub-vendor performs, which the buyer's inspector witnesses, which are hold points where work stops until inspection. Each choice has to match the specification, and it has to be something your foundry, forge shop or test lab can actually deliver.

Revising. The QAP comes back with comments: a missing test, a wrong standard edition, a witness point the buyer wanted. Each round means re-reading, editing, re-signing and resubmitting, while the shop waits.

Notice where the knowledge sits. The person who can do this well understands your product, the standards and the buyer's habits. In most SMEs that is one or two people, and they are also the people running inspection.

Why the QAP decides how long your dossier takes

Every line you commit to in the QAP becomes a record you must produce later. In the typical plans attached to BHEL's guidelines, for every item ticked in the records column, test certificates "shall be submitted to BHEL for records". The QAP you write at the start of the order is the checklist for the dossier you deliver at the end.

That has two consequences. A test added to the QAP without thinking becomes a certificate you must chase from a sub-vendor months later. And a QAP that does not match what your shop and your suppliers actually record leaves a gap that nobody notices until the dossier is being assembled and the last payment is waiting. Our article on preparing a manufacturing record book covers that end of the order.

Time spent getting the QAP right is the cheapest dossier time you will ever spend.

How do you measure QAP hours on your own orders?

Before you change anything, find out what QAPs cost you. Your own files hold most of the answer.

Take your last ten orders that needed a QAP and note, for each:

1. The buyer and the product. How many different buyer formats did you prepare?
2. Days from purchase order to QAP submission.
3. Approval rounds. How many times did it come back with comments, and what kind of comment?
4. Days from first submission to approval, and whether manufacture waited.
5. Who prepared it, and what they would otherwise have been doing.

Then time the next QAP as it is prepared, with a simple log of start and stop times against reading, referencing, drafting and revising.

The arithmetic is easy to check. For example, if a QAP has 60 rows and reading the specification, finding the reference and writing each row takes 4 minutes, that is 240 minutes, or 4 hours, for the first draft. If it comes back twice and each round takes an hour, that is 6 hours per QAP. At eight QAPs a month, that is 48 hours of your most experienced quality person's month.

Your numbers may be smaller or larger. The point is to know them, and to know which part is the real cost: the drafting, the rounds, or the days the shop waited.

What can you fix without new software?

Several of the worst hours come from not reusing work you have already had approved.

• Keep a library of approved QAPs, filed by buyer, product and material, at the approved revision. Start every new QAP from the closest approved one, not the most recent one.
• Keep a comments register. Every comment a buyer has ever raised, with the fix. Most comments repeat. Check a new QAP against the register before it goes out.
• Write a requirements checklist per buyer. Standards they insist on, tests they always add, how they want records named. Repeat buyers ask for the same things.
• Mark what changed. When you start from an approved QAP, list the differences in this order's specification first, then edit only those rows.
• Check your sub-vendors before you commit. If the QAP says the forging supplier provides an impact test report, confirm they can, before the buyer approves it.

If you prepare a few QAPs a year for two or three buyers, this discipline may be all you need. A shared folder and a spreadsheet do the job.

When is AI the wrong tool for QAP preparation?

AI is not always the answer, whatever a vendor says. Be sceptical if:

• Your buyers and products repeat. If most orders are the same product for the same buyers, an approved library and a checklist give you most of the saving with no new system.
• Volume is low. A handful of QAPs a year rarely justifies more than good filing.
• The decision is a judgement. Whether to accept an extra test, whether a sub-vendor can deliver, whether to take a deviation to the buyer: these belong to your quality head. A system can show what the specification asks for; it must not decide what you commit to.
• Nobody will check its output. A QAP carries your signature and stamp. Anything that drafts one must be checked by someone who understands the order, every time.

What does a working system look like?

Where volume is real and buyers, specifications and products vary, the hours are in reading and matching, and that is where a well-built system helps. In practice it should:

• Read the order documents you receive: purchase order, specification, datasheets and drawings, and pull out each requirement that affects inspection and testing as a named item.
• Keep the source. Every requirement points back to the page and clause it came from, so the reviewer can confirm it in seconds.
• Start from your approved QAPs. Draft from the closest approved plan for that buyer and product, and show which rows change and why.
• Validate before it drafts. A requirement with no matching row, a standard edition that differs from the specification, a record nobody is assigned to produce: these are shown, not smoothed over.
• Flag doubts to a person. Conflicting clauses, an unreadable drawing note, a test your sub-vendor has never supplied: these go to the quality head, not into the draft.
• Carry the record list forward, so the records the QAP commits you to become the checklist for the dossier.

Your quality head still decides and signs. The difference is that they review a checked draft with its sources beside it, instead of reading every page of the order from scratch. Our document intelligence page shows an example of what we build for documents like these.

What should you ask before buying anything?

Whether it is document-control software, a QAP module, a service or a custom build, ask:

1. How many hours does our QAP work take today, measured, and how many will this remove?
2. Does it read the documents our buyers actually send, including scanned specifications and drawings?
3. Does it start from our approved QAPs and our buyers' formats, or does it impose its own?
4. Can every row it drafts be traced back to the clause that required it?
5. What happens when it is unsure? Does it guess, or does it flag?
6. Does the record list carry through to the final dossier, or do we rebuild it at the end?
7. If our volume is low, will you tell us this is not worth doing?

If the answer to the last question is anything but yes, keep looking.

Where to start

Take your last ten QAPs and write down three numbers for each: rows, approval rounds, and days from purchase order to approval. That page will tell you whether you need a library, a comments register, or something that reads your orders and drafts from your approved plans.

If you would like a second opinion on it, book a 30-minute call about this one process at prakreon.com/contact. We will ask who prepares your QAPs, for which buyers and how long each takes, and we will tell you plainly if the answer is better filing rather than new software.