Quality planning: settling the checks, gauges and sign-offs before a programme starts

Reading the contract alongside the drawing

The drawing states geometry and material. The contract often states something else entirely: reporting obligations, retention of samples, notification before any process change, right of access for the customer, and how disputed measurements get settled. Those clauses drive real cost and are routinely discovered after pricing. Someone technical should read the commercial terms before the quotation is signed, because a requirement to hold witness samples for years, or to submit results with every consignment, changes the labour model. The reverse also happens: buyers occasionally ask for reporting nobody uses, which is worth negotiating away while goodwill lasts.

Deciding which features deserve the attention

Not every dimension on a drawing matters equally, but drawings rarely say so. Classifying characteristics is the act of asking, feature by feature, what happens if this one is wrong: does it stop the part fitting, does it fail in service, does it merely look untidy. That conversation belongs to the customer's engineer and yours together, because the manufacturer sees which features are hard to hold and the designer knows which ones the product needs. The output is a short list that receives measurement, capability evidence and tighter reaction rules, while the remainder is verified more lightly. Without this step, effort spreads evenly and lands mostly in the wrong place.

Sequencing, so that nothing waits on a gauge that was never ordered

Certain items have long lead times of their own and must be started early: purpose-made fixtures, functional test rigs, calibration of anything unusual, and agreement on the datum scheme used to measure a complex form. The classic launch failure is a plant able to make the part but unable to prove it, standing beside a machine full of finished stock waiting for a checking fixture. Working backwards from the first customer delivery, put the measurement equipment on the same timeline as the production tooling and review both at the same meeting.

The moment a programme is declared fit to produce

Launch readiness has to be an event with a named decision-maker, not a gradual slide into production. Give it a small set of entry conditions that can be answered yes or no: the process has been run and its output measured, the first parts have been proven against the drawing, the gauges are in place and calibrated, operators are signed off, and the reaction plan is written. Give the decision-maker the right to say no with consequences understood. Where that authority sits with the person accountable for the delivery date, expect the answer always to be yes.

Keeping the plan alive after the launch team disperses

The plan is written by people who move to the next programme. Ownership must transfer explicitly to whoever runs the part in steady production, otherwise the document ages while the process evolves. Two triggers deserve a standing rule: any change to tooling, material or method, and any recurrence at the customer. Both should send the plan back for revision rather than generating a separate corrective action that leaves the original document untouched. A plan that no longer matches the floor is worse than none, because people rely on it while it quietly misleads them.

Frequently asked questions

When in a programme should quality planning start?

At quotation, at least in outline, because that is when the commitments are made that everything else has to satisfy. A rough view of which features are difficult, what measurement they will need, and whether any of it requires equipment you do not own belongs in the price. Detailed planning follows design freeze. Plants that begin after tooling is ordered end up designing checks around a process they can no longer influence, which is the expensive order to do it in.

Who should decide which characteristics are treated as critical?

The customer's engineer and your process engineer jointly, with quality recording the outcome. The designer knows what the feature does in the assembly and what happens in service if it drifts. The manufacturer knows which features the process struggles to hold and which are cheap to control. Neither party can produce a sensible list alone, and a list imposed by one side tends to be either unnecessarily long or blind to the features that will actually cause trouble.

What if the customer will not engage in planning discussions?

Make your assumptions explicit and send them in writing. State which features you have treated as significant, what you will measure and report, what you will not check, and the interpretation you have adopted where the drawing is ambiguous. Silence then works in your favour rather than against it. It also converts a later dispute from an argument about intent into a question of whether anybody objected at the time, which is a far better position to occupy.