INSTRUMENT 12 · APQP LIFECYCLE EXPLORER
Select a lifecycle stage to see the evidence, opportunity and verification posture. Industrialize and validate are the practical first entry points. Think of the five stages like a relay race: each one hands evidence to the next, and AI can only enter where there's already something solid to hand off.
Example: a "flange flatness ≤ 0.20mm" tolerance should show up in the requirement, the drawing, the risk analysis, the control plan, the work instruction and the inspection record — six places, like one ingredient tracked from shopping list to recipe to plated dish. In the trace section below, select which of those six documents actually carry it for a case you know; the ones you can't select are exactly where a hidden mismatch could survive undetected.
STAGE 01 · Plan & requirements
Retrieve authoritative requirements and surface missing links.
VERIFICATION QUADRANT
Use-rule / appraisalHUMAN GATE
The output prepares evidence and findings. A named competent person accepts the quality action.
BETWEEN-THE-DOCUMENTS TRACE
Select the artefacts that currently carry the characteristic. The gaps show where a cross-document check should focus.
6 connections still need evidence or review.
WHY THIS INSTRUMENT EXISTS
The same capability can be premature at one lifecycle gate and overdue at another; placing it against the product lifecycle instead of treating "AI in quality" as one undifferentiated category is what tells a team when to build.
A predictive or retrieval capability that is not routed to a defined lifecycle gate tends to drift into ad hoc use with no owner and no revalidation trigger — mapping it to the lifecycle is what keeps that from happening quietly.