How do you conduct design reviews and audits in product design and development?

1 What are design reviews and audits?

Design reviews and audits are systematic and structured evaluations of your product design and development process. They involve checking the design inputs, outputs, and documentation against predefined criteria, such as specifications, standards, best practices, and customer feedback. They also involve verifying the performance, functionality, and reliability of your product or its components through testing, inspection, or simulation.

3 When to conduct design reviews and audits?

Design reviews and audits should be conducted throughout the product design and development phase, according to a planned schedule and frequency. The APQP guidelines suggest four main types of design reviews and audits for phase 2. A design feasibility review should be the first one, assessing whether the product concept is feasible, realistic, and aligned with customer needs. Design verification review follows to verify if the design meets the inputs and requirements, using analytical or empirical methods. Design validation review comes next to validate if the product performs as intended in its use environment. Finally, a design audit is conducted to audit if the product design and development process complies with the APQP standards.

4 How to conduct design reviews and audits?

Design reviews and audits should be conducted by a multidisciplinary team of experts, who possess the necessary knowledge, skills, and authority to evaluate your product design and development process. The team should include representatives from your design team as well as other relevant functions such as quality, engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, marketing, or customer service. Additionally, external parties such as suppliers, customers, or independent auditors should be involved when appropriate. To ensure an effective review or audit is conducted, the following steps should be taken: preparing for the review or audit by defining the scope and objectives, assigning roles and responsibilities to team members, collecting data and documents, scheduling and communicating with stakeholders; conducting the review or audit by following the agenda and using selected methods and tools; asking questions and collecting evidence to evaluate the product design process; recording findings and recommendations in a report or form; following up on the review or audit by prioritizing actions to address findings and recommendations, assigning owners and deadlines for each action, monitoring progress of actions taken, verifying effectiveness of actions taken, and communicating results of review or audit to stakeholders.

5 What are some best practices for design reviews and audits?

To ensure successful and beneficial design reviews and audits, you should plan ahead and conduct them regularly according to the APQP milestones and deliverables. Involve the right people and use clear, objective, and measurable criteria and methods. Focus on finding solutions rather than assigning blame. Document and communicate the results and feedback clearly and promptly, then implement and verify the corrective and preventive actions.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?