Project management
Plain-language summary
How a new-part project is planned, resourced, and steered so it lands on time, on cost, and at the required quality.
What the clause is really asking
The intent is to control the risk that a project drifts — late milestones, missed customer requirements, under-resourcing, or escalations that nobody owns. Good project management means there is a clear plan, the right people with defined responsibilities, and a working mechanism to track progress and react when things slip. It is the backbone that holds product and process development together.
What auditors look for
A process auditor checks that the project has a real, maintained schedule tied to customer milestones, not a one-off chart. They ask who is accountable, how risks and open issues are tracked and escalated, whether resources (people, budget, equipment) are actually committed, and how customer requirements flow into the plan. They look for evidence the team reacts to deviations rather than discovering them at launch.
Typical evidence
Project plan/timeline with milestones; responsibility matrix (e.g. RACI); risk and open-issues lists with owners and dates; review-meeting minutes; resource and capacity planning; customer-requirement tracking.
How to comply — recommendations
Stand the project up with a named project lead, a cross-functional team, and a living schedule aligned to the customer's milestones. Keep an open-issues and risk log that is genuinely worked in regular reviews, with escalation that reaches management when needed. Make resource commitments explicit and revisit them as scope changes. The strongest evidence is a track record of the team spotting slippage early and recovering it.
Common nonconformities
Schedule exists but is not maintained or not linked to customer milestones; unclear or overlapping responsibilities; risk/open-issues list stale or untracked; resources assumed rather than committed; escalation only happens after the problem is already a crisis.
Related clauses
IATF 16949 8.3.2.1 (design/dev — APQP/project management); ISO 9001 8.3.2 (design and development planning)
Qlause provides interpretive guidance only and is not a substitute for the standard. Refer to your licensed copy of the relevant standard for the authoritative text.