How to Qualify a China Aluminum Casting Supplier (IATF 16949 Checklist)

# How to Qualify a China Aluminum Casting Supplier (IATF 16949 Checklist)

If you are an SQE or procurement engineer adding a new aluminum casting supplier in China to your AVL, the job is not a factory tour and a handshake. It is a structured audit against IATF 16949, a PPAP review, and a pile of measurement data that either adds up or it does not. This article is a working checklist for that audit — written for the person who has to sign the qualification report.

Why IATF 16949 Actually Matters for Castings

IATF 16949 is the automotive sector's quality management standard, built on top of ISO 9001 with a long list of automotive-specific requirements. For a casting supplier, three pieces of the standard do most of the work during qualification:

• •Customer-specific requirements (CSRs). Every OEM layers its own rules on top of IATF 16949 — Stellantis, GM, Ford, VW, and the Japanese OEMs each publish their own. If you are building for a Tier 1 that feeds one of these OEMs, the supplier must be able to read and flow down those CSRs. Ask them to show you the CSR matrix for your end customer. If they cannot produce one, that is your first data point.
• •Continuous improvement. IATF expects measurable improvement over time — scrap rate, PPM, first-pass yield, on-time delivery. A casting house that cannot show you a trend chart older than six months is either new to automotive or not tracking the right things.
• •Traceability. For any safety-related or regulated part, you need to trace a finished casting back to the heat lot, the alloy certificate, the operator, the machine, and the shift. IATF 16949 treats this as table stakes.

These three ideas — CSR flow-down, improvement culture, and traceability — are what separate an IATF-certified shop from an ISO 9001 shop that happens to make castings.

The Audit Checklist

The checklist below is what I use on site. It is not exhaustive, but if a supplier passes these sections cleanly, they are probably real.

1. Quality Management System

• •Valid IATF 16949 certificate. Check the certificate number on the IATF database (iatfglobaloversight.org). A screenshot of a PDF means nothing; the database entry is what matters. Confirm scope includes aluminum casting, not just machining or assembly.
• •Certification body. Prefer an IATF-recognized CB. Note the next surveillance audit date and any open nonconformities if they will share them.
• •Clause 8.4 — Control of externally provided processes, products, and services. Ask how they qualify their own sub-tier suppliers (alloy ingot mills, heat treatment, plating, surface coating). Clause 8.4.2.3 specifically covers supplier QMS development — how the casting house pushes its own raw material and outsourced-process suppliers toward ISO 9001 or IATF 16949. If the casting supplier buys ingots from a random trader with no mill cert, you have just inherited that risk.
• •Internal audit and management review records. Ask to see the last internal audit plan and the last management review minutes. You are not reading for content; you are checking that the system is actually running on a schedule.

2. Process Approval — PPAP

PPAP (Production Part Approval Process) is the deliverable that proves the supplier can make your part repeatably, not just once. The supplier should treat PPAP as routine. If they ask what PPAP is, stop the audit.

AIAG defines five PPAP submission levels:

• •Level 1 — Part Submission Warrant (PSW) only, sent to the customer (plus the appearance approval report for parts with appearance requirements).
• •Level 2 — PSW with product samples and limited supporting data.
• •Level 3 — PSW with samples and complete supporting data. Most commonly requested for new automotive parts.
• •Level 4 — PSW and other requirements as defined by the customer.
• •Level 5 — PSW with samples and complete supporting data reviewed at the supplier's location.

Clause 8.3.4.4 of IATF 16949 references the product approval process and points to PPAP (or a customer-equivalent process) as the accepted method. During the audit, ask for:

• •A redacted PPAP package from a recent job for another automotive customer. You want to see the 18 PPAP elements actually filled in — design records, DFMEA, process flow, PFMEA, control plan, MSA, capability studies, ISIR, material certs, appearance approval, and the PSW itself.
• •Evidence they have done a Level 3 submission recently. Level 3 is where most of the data-heavy work lives, and it is the best proxy for whether the team can handle a full package.
• •Turnaround time commitments for PPAP on a new part — 4 to 8 weeks is realistic for a gravity or low-pressure casting with machining.

3. Dimensional Verification

Castings are dimensional parts, and the audit needs measurement data, not promises.

• •CMM reports. Ask to see CMM reports from the last 30 days — not the showcase one from two years ago. Look at the machine (Zeiss, Hexagon, Mitutoyo are common), the calibration sticker, and the operator training record.
• •First Article Inspection (FAI). In automotive, the equivalent deliverable is the ISIR (Initial Sample Inspection Report) inside the PPAP package, which follows the same idea as AS9102 in aerospace: every dimension on the drawing measured, balloon-numbered, and reported against tolerance. Pick a random finished part from their warehouse and ask them to pull the ISIR for its part number. If they cannot produce it in 10 minutes, their traceability is broken.
• •GD&T literacy. Hand the quality manager a drawing with a composite positional tolerance and ask how they would measure it. The answer tells you whether you are talking to someone who understands automotive drawings or someone who only measures in X and Y.

4. Material Verification

Aluminum casting alloys are not interchangeable. A390 is not A356 is not ADC12. Chemistry matters.

• •Spectrometer on site. A qualified automotive casting house has its own optical emission spectrometer (typically a Spectromaxx, Foundry-Master, or ARL). Ask when it was last standardized and see the standardization log. No in-house spectrometer means every heat is a leap of faith based on the ingot vendor's word.
• •Mill test certificates (MTC/3.1). Every ingot lot should come with an EN 10204 3.1 certificate from the smelter. Cross-check a random MTC against the receiving log and against a spectro result on the same heat. The three numbers should agree.
• •Chemistry traceability from heat to part. Given a finished part serial or lot, the supplier should be able to walk you back to the furnace charge, the spectro ticket, and the ingot MTC. This is the traceability chain IATF 16949 expects. If it takes them two days and a phone call, it does not exist.

5. Surface Finish

• •Ra measurement capability. A calibrated surface roughness tester (Mitutoyo SJ-series, Mahr, or equivalent) should be in the lab. Ask for the calibration record and a recent measurement report against a drawing callout.
• •Visual standards. Casting defects — porosity, cold shuts, flow lines, shrinkage — need a documented accept/reject boundary. Look for limit sample boards or boundary sample photos kept at the inspection station. "We just know what looks bad" is not a visual standard.
• •Coating and plating. If the part gets anodized, powder-coated, or chromated, ask whether that is in-house or outsourced, and whether the coating supplier is on their approved vendor list under Clause 8.4.

6. Traceability and Heat-Lot Records

This deserves its own section because it is where most Chinese casting houses quietly fail.

• •Each pour should have a heat number. Each heat number should link to a furnace charge sheet, a spectro result, and the operator on shift.
• •Each finished part should carry (or be traceable to) that heat number — either stamped, laser-marked, or linked by lot tag and routing card.
• •Ask to trace one finished part backward. Then ask to trace one heat forward to every part it produced. Both directions should work.

7. CAPA Process

Clause 10 of IATF 16949 covers nonconformity and corrective action. Ask for the last three 8D reports the supplier issued to a customer. You are checking for:

• •Real root cause analysis (5-Why or fishbone), not "operator error" as the final answer.
• •Containment actions with dates.
• •Permanent corrective action with verification of effectiveness.
• •Horizontal deployment to similar parts or processes.

A casting house that cannot produce 8Ds is a casting house that has either never had a real customer complaint — unlikely — or does not document them. Neither is acceptable.

8. Measurement Resources (IATF Clause 7.1.5)

Clause 7.1.5 of IATF 16949 covers monitoring and measurement resources — calibration, MSA, and gage capability. Spot-check three gages on the shop floor: read the calibration sticker, ask for the calibration certificate, and ask whether the gage was included in the last Gage R&R study. If any of those three fails, the measurement system is not under control.

Red Flags

If you see any of these, stop the qualification and find another supplier:

• •No valid IATF 16949 certificate, or a certificate whose scope does not cover casting.
• •No in-house spectrometer.
• •No CMM, or a CMM with an expired calibration sticker.
• •No FAI/ISIR history for any part they currently produce.
• •No PPAP experience at Level 3 or higher.
• •No 8D or CAPA records.
• •Cannot trace a finished part to a heat lot in under 15 minutes.
• •Quality manager reports to production rather than to the GM.

On-Site Walkthrough Tips

• •Floor before conference room. Presentations are always polished; the shop floor tells the truth. Look at 5S, tool organization, scrap segregation, and whether operators have control plans at their stations.
• •Pick parts at random. Do not let them choose the sample. Walk to finished goods, pick a box, and ask for the full documentation package on that lot.
• •Watch a pour if you can. Gating, pouring temperature, skimming, and degassing practice tell you a lot about process discipline in five minutes.
• •Talk to an operator through your interpreter. Ask what they do when a dimension drifts. The answer should reference a reaction plan on the control plan, not "I tell my supervisor."
• •Check the gage crib. A well-run shop has a locked, climate-controlled gage area with a calibration schedule visible.

Closing Note

Qualifying an aluminum casting supplier in China is a week of work done right, and it pays back every field failure you avoid. Run the checklist, pull the data, and trust what you measure.

For reference, Bohua in Ningbo is a gravity casting factory operating under automotive quality certifications and has an established workflow for PPAP documentation, so it tends to be a useful benchmark when you are calibrating what "good" looks like on a China audit.