The Significant Impact of APQP Implementation on Foundries

Receive order → Open mold for trial production → Defects appear (porosity, shrinkage, cracks) → Repeatedly modify the process → Finally achieve a barely stable result.

This led to extremely high trial-and-error costs and unstable delivery schedules. After introducing APQP, projects were broken down into multiple phases before mass production:
1. Product design review
2. Process feasibility analysis
3. Risk identification (e.g., FMEA)
4. Control Plan Development
5. Pilot Production Validation

The core change this brought about is that issues are anticipated during the design phase rather than passively exposed on the production floor. Many problems are resolved before production even begins.

Round 1 Prototyping: Severe internal porosity
Round 2: Modified gate location → Limited improvement
Round 3: Added venting → Still unstable
Round 4: Modified local mold structure

The entire process took nearly three months, with a scrap rate that at one point exceeded 30%.

However, after formally adopting the APQP methodology, we strictly followed APQP procedures for subsequent similar projects.

Unreasonable molten metal filling path → Prone to entrapped air
Localized hot spots → Prone to shrinkage porosity
Inadequate venting design

Subsequently, measures were implemented during the process design phase:
Optimized the gating system
Installed chill blocks to control solidification sequence
Added vent channels

As a result, acceptable quality levels were achieved in the first trial production run, with the scrap rate controlled below 5%, and the development cycle shortened by approximately 40%. These improvements exemplify the typical value delivered by APQP.

1. Breaking Down Departmental Barriers

In traditional foundries, process, quality, and production departments often operate in isolation. APQP, however, emphasizes cross-departmental collaboration:
Design, process, and quality teams participate jointly in reviews.
Issues are resolved at the conference table rather than through on-site disputes.

2. Standardization of Expertise

The foundry industry relies heavily on experience, but this expertise is often concentrated in the hands of a few individuals.

Through tools such as FMEA, control plans, and process flowcharts, APQP transforms this expertise into standardized documentation, reducing reliance on “master craftsmen.”

Many companies that have not implemented—or have not fully implemented—APQP believe: “APQP adds a lot of paperwork and slows down efficiency.”

However, in practice:

While there is indeed an initial increase in short-term investment (meetings, analysis, documentation), in the medium to long term, implementing APQP leads to benefits such as fewer prototype runs, lower scrap rates, and reduced change costs, resulting in an overall decrease in costs. Costs shift from “waste during manufacturing” to “prevention during development,” and the cost of prevention is far lower than the cost of failure.

The true significance of APQP lies not in the number of forms filled out, but in changing a mindset: quality is not achieved through inspection, but is determined during the design and planning stages.

For foundries like INNOVAW, introducing and truly implementing APQP often marks a turning point—a shift from a traditional model reliant on experience and trial-and-error to a modern manufacturing system characterized by systematization, reproducibility, and sustainable improvement. If equipment determines the lower limit, then APQP often determines the upper limit.