Documentation

Manual

A short tour of Pre6 PPAP — from drawing upload to a complete PPAP package.

01

Getting started

Pre6 PPAP turns engineering drawings and a process flow into a complete PPAP package — PFMEA, control plan, and inspection report — exported through your own templates.

Who this is for

  • Quality and manufacturing engineers preparing PPAP submissions
  • Suppliers to automotive, aerospace, and other regulated supply chains
  • Teams replacing manual cell-by-cell PPAP authoring with a connected workflow
Familiarity with the standard PPAP elements (PFMEA, control plan, inspection report) is assumed — Pre6 PPAP doesn't replace the standard, it removes the manual work of producing it.
02

Upload drawings

Start a new PPAP and upload one drawing per part. Dimensions are detected, ballooned, and rendered on an interactive canvas you can refine.

File guidelines

  • PDF, PNG, or JPEG. Multi-page drawings are supported.
  • Every dimension is detected, classified (linear, diameter, angle, position, and more), and assigned a global balloon number.
  • Annotation work persists between sessions — reopening a drawing doesn't undo prior edits.
The canvas opens with the detected balloons; you can edit, add, or remove any of them. Notes annotations are stripped automatically on entry, since they aren't part of the PPAP package.
03

Process flow

Drop your process flow spreadsheet onto the upload area. Operations, materials, and machines are extracted in a single pass.

What gets extracted

  • Each operation row, with its machine, material, and process notes
  • Operation type, inferred (machining, finishing, assembly, and so on)
  • Operation prefix and numbering, normalised across vendor formats
If a parse goes wrong, Import History keeps every spreadsheet you have uploaded. Reprocess any past import as parsing improves — no need to re-upload the file.
04

Operations

Operations connect drawings, dimensions, and the rest of the PPAP. Each operation carries a name, machine, and material, and is the unit that PFMEA and the control plan are built around.

How operations are reused

  • AI keeps your operations, materials, and machines aligned across imports, so similar parts skip the setup
  • A unified operations view across every PPAP keeps naming and machine assignment consistent
  • Operation type aliases (thread, runout, counterbore, and more) are recognised across formats
05

Dimension mapping

For each operation, mark which dimensions are produced or inspected. The visual process drawing makes this fast: pick an operation in the sidebar, then click balloons in the canvas to assign them.

Why mapping matters

  • Drives PFMEA generation — failure modes are scoped to the operation that owns the dimension
  • Drives the control plan — characteristics, methods, and frequencies follow the mapping
  • A drawing-level coverage view shows what is still unmapped before submission
Special characteristics carry through the mapping into PFMEA, the control plan, and the export, so they remain marked end-to-end.
06

PFMEA

The PFMEA is generated from your operations and dimension mapping, then enriched with AI suggestions for failure modes, effects, controls, and severity / occurrence / detection ratings.

Drafting that fits your process

  • Provide a manufacturing context (for example, CNC machining of aerospace titanium) and suggestions are grounded in it
  • Process-characteristic-aware drafting anchors failure modes to each operation step
  • Resolve library-row conflicts inline — your edits are preserved
Bulk drafting scales to hundreds of rows in a single save.
07

Control plan

The control plan ships with every row pre-populated: characteristic, specification, control method, frequency, sample size, and reaction plan.

What you can do with it

  • Generate control methods directly into the control plan with AI drafting, ready to refine
  • Import historical control plans into the control plan library — new PPAPs draw on those entries automatically
  • Each column header shows its industry-standard definition on hover, so the table reads correctly to auditors
Special characteristics flow from the drawing into the control plan so they appear marked in the right rows.
08

Inspection report

The inspection report aggregates every dimension across every drawing in the PPAP, with the assigned operation and current specification.

Numbering and coverage

  • Global balloon numbers stay consistent from drawing through PFMEA, control plan, and inspection report
  • Drawing-level progress shows what is still left before submission
  • Tables export in the current sort order, so what you see on screen is what you get
09

Templates and export

Export PFMEA, control plan, and inspection report through your own spreadsheet templates. Column mapping is auto-detected, with an inline preview that shows how each data field maps to a template column before you export.

Working with templates

  • Drag-and-drop a template onto the upload zone — no file picker needed
  • Special characteristics carry through into the export
  • Sticky table headers and a frozen first column keep tables readable while you scroll the preview
PFMEA, control plan, and inspection report exports each respect the template you upload, so the customer-facing artefact looks like every other document your organisation ships.
10

Reusable libraries

Three libraries live alongside your PPAPs and grow with each one you ship.

  • FMEA library — failure modes, effects, and controls. AI-assisted entry suggests enrichments based on the existing library.
  • Control plan library — historical control plans imported once, reused across every PPAP that touches the same characteristics.
  • Operations library — a unified view of operations across every PPAP in the organisation.
Libraries are organisation-scoped: teammates see and contribute to the same entries, customers do not.
11

Data and privacy

Every PPAP belongs to an organisation. Data is isolated per organisation; no cross-organisation visibility.

Good to know

  • Organizational ALL PPAP data can be deleted.
  • Every spreadsheet import is listed in Import History, with the option to reprocess as parsing improves.
  • If you need an NDA or a written data-handling addendum, email enquiry@pre6.ai.
12

Need help?

Email enquiry@pre6.ai with a short description of what you are working on and a screenshot if helpful. Responses typically come within one business day.

Feedback on missing parsers, template formats, or library features is welcome — most requests ship within a week or two of being raised.