J&L Manufacturing Cuts PPAP Time from 1 Week to 2 Hours

J&L Manufacturing is an ISO 9001 certified job shop that creates complex parts via CNC machining, metal bending, laser cutting, and other advanced manufacturing processes. They serve customers in the automotive, transit, and storage industries. To ensure top quality parts for their customers, J&L performs regular setup, in-process, and final inspections for each job.

Earlier this year Christy Wiggam, J&L's quality manager, reached out to me and the 1factory team to see if 1factory could help handle her growing PPAP workload. At the time, it was taking her a whole week to get through one PPAP, and it was a real constraint on the quantity and dollar amount of jobs they were able to accept. In the months since she's used 1factory, Christy has completed 168 PPAPs, an average of over one per day. Anyone familiar with the PPAP process knows this is blazing speed for a 1-person team, so I sat down with Christy to hear her story.

Jon (J): Can you describe your old PPAP process?

Christy (C): Before 1factory, one PPAP would take me at least a week from start to finish. I'd take a paper copy of the customer print, mark each dimension with a yellow sticker, scan the drawing into my computer, and manually type each dimension and inspection requirement into an Excel template. From there, I had to create the PFMEA, control plan, and process flow in just as slow of a fashion, and finally get everything inspected, printed out, and shipped off to the customer.

J: So, what made you decide to look for a better way?

C: At the time we were not charging anything extra to submit PPAPs, and we had a new customer coming on that we knew would request a lot more PPAPs. I Googled "PPAP Software" and found a few options, but most were part of much larger, complicated software packages that we just didn't need. I came across 1factory, and it really stuck out to me because it looked so user-friendly and was focused solely on PPAP and inspection.

J: Now that you're using 1factory, how has your capacity to complete PPAPs changed?

C: Let's put it this way: I just finished up 7 PPAPs this morning! Now, some of those were just putting the finishing touches on, but the time it takes me to do a PPAP has gone down so much. I'm doing these all myself and it used to take me at least a week – now with 1factory it takes me an hour, maybe two, from start to finish.

J: What does your PPAP process look like now?

C: When we first set up 1factory I filled out the "PPAP Processes" sheet, which is basically a template for the process flow, PFMEA, and control plan. So now whenever I have a drawing that requires a PPAP, I just upload the file into 1factory, all the dimensions get ballooned and pulled out into the inspection plan, and I just match up the operations with my existing PPAP processes to automatically create my PPAP documents. I can then inspect the FAI directly in 1factory and compile everything in my PPAP log. I mostly perform level 2 & 4 PPAPs, and each time I create a new one it pulls in the exact list of required documents. It all just goes a lot faster, everything’s so organized and I don’t need to go through 10 different file systems to find what I need.

J: So how often do you create PPAPs now?

C: At the minimum I do 5 per week, now. From start to finish it takes one, maybe two hours… I’ve got it pretty streamlined right now.

J: What kind of impact has the ability to create more PPAPs had on the business?

C: We used to only accept a few jobs where PPAPs were required, and we didn't charge anything for completing them. Now we charge a fee, and they take less time, so there's definitely a direct impact. We knew we were bringing on some customers that would require a bunch of PPAPs, so thank goodness we got into 1factory beforehand because I don't know what we'd be doing now. I think I'm at 168 PPAPs for the year already.

J: Besides the time saved, is there anything else 1factory has helped with?

C: I tell you; the auto-population of these documents makes things so much faster, but there are also fewer mistakes in them. One of our customers forwards our PPAPs along to their customer, and they can't believe how fast they get accepted. Rarely now do I have their QC manager come back to me and say, "this isn't right". I send it once and I pretty much have 100% first time approval. We've also been using 1factory for all our CAPA, NCR, and gage calibrations. I want to get the Approved Vendor List set up soon, and eventually get all the operators on the shop floor inputting their in-process measurements directly into 1factory. Right now we're still primarily a paper-based shop, but 1factory should help us change that.

J: Would you recommend 1factory to other shops?

C: Oh definitely, the streamlining of the whole process is amazing. Before you'd have to bubble a print with stickers, scan it in, then create a dimensional report from that, then take that and create separate FEMA, control plan, and process flow. This just streamlines everything, especially if you put the work in to build out your PPAP processes up front. We've really enjoyed using 1factory.