Michelle: To start off with, could you tell our listeners a little bit about your background?

Jennifer: Well, I actually started my career in engineering. I was asked to support a company audit, a 9100 audit we were preparing for. And as I got more involved in the process, something just kind of clicked. I realized, as well as my company realized, that I had a knack for quality compliance and some continuous improvement activities.

So, that experience really opened the door for me into the quality world and not long after that audit was completed, I was asked to transfer it into the quality organization for my company. That was over 10 years ago, and I've been in quality ever since and absolutely love it.

Michelle: That's good. It seems like for so many people it's happenstance. They just sort of come into it without knowing.

Jennifer: Just fall into it. Yep.

Michelle: So, for the show, can you tell us a little bit about your session and how you decided to speak about that topic?

Jennifer: I am going to be talking about Advanced Product Quality Planning, also known as APQP. I actually am the document representative, the international document representative, for that on the IAQG that you mentioned earlier. And right now, APQP is making a lot of big waves in our aerospace industry.

And what APQP does [is] shifts us from being a reactive mindset to being in a proactive mindset. So, if you think about it, if you think of APQP as a roadmap for program management, it keeps a close eye on some of those critical quality checkpoints. And this starts all the way in the planning phase and continues through to the final delivery phase. And at the heart of APQP, we have some powerful tools that help organizations identify risks early in the development and manufacturing process.

And more importantly, it gives us the structure to put solid communication plans in place when there are risks realized and before they turn into real problems. So, in short, APQP is really just a smarter way to plan, build, and deliver with confidence.