Is the Aerospace industry the same as the Automotive industry?

Walleye said:

Ford was one of the few that did not get bailed out.
Our customers in Aerospace have very very tight tolerances +/-.0001, and they expect production and Quality with good parts. OOT do not sell!

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John Predmore said:

I am not an industry spokesman, but I have worked in both industries. I think FAI came first, and PPAP was an evolution from first-piece-inspection once the U.S. Big Three realized statistical control in production was needed to compete with the quality of Japanese Automakers in the 1970's and 1980's. In Aerospace and Defense, production volumes might be in the neighborhood of 20/year. In Automotive, production volumes might be 20 per hour or 20 per minute. So the stereotype is a different scale of production. Automotive may use more assembly line production, with a high incentive for mass-produced parts which fit together interchangeably. Aerospace might have lower production rates, so they have different needs.

The Aerospace industry is in fact moving in the direction of more comprehensive and rigorous Advanced Product Quality Planning, with their version of APQP/PPAP initiatives.

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Bev D said:

Why are you asking? I’m not trying to be mean or snarky but to really answer your question we need to understand what you are really trying to learn? In other words what is your true question?

And why aren’t you asking about pharma and medical devices? They also have industry specific qualitative ‘methods’ or approaches and are not only different for each other but are different form aerospace and automotive…

All have good solid methods and all have stupid methods. Some of it is because of scale, some of it is based on laziness/lack of manpower on the part of the Customer (just give me a yes or no answer such as with Cpk), some of it is based on what was the fad at the time and then became tradition (“that’s the way we’ve always done it”). Some of it is just the age old “We’re different so even if we are going to do the same thing we are going to call it something else” (TPS vs first lean methods and six sigma vs “ACE” and PDCA vs 4P, Quality by Design - QBD - vs DoE, etc…) Some of it is based on the science of the type of processes - and components that make up the majority of the product. For example, I used to make diagnostic medical devices and was regulated by the USDA for some of them. The USDA had historically dealt with vaccines and the devices they regulated for us were rapid assay type tests for animal diseases - these are based on two very different sciences and are used quite differently. But since the USDA reviewers were hired before veterinary diagnostics were prevalent they applied vaccine rules and scientific knowledge - bad fit.

In the end it comes down to well intended methods that became outpaced (AQL inspections) or misapplied as industry and evolved…or as theoretical education overtook practical training and experience…leptokurtophia vs teh quality engineering orthodoxy of the 50s and 60s.

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