AIAG stands for "Automotive Industry Action Group", the american association for the automotive industry. The AIAG publishes standards for implementing and auditing requirements of the automotive supply chain and its technologies.

CQI stands for "Continuous Quality Improvement" and serves the purpose of coninuously improving quality. The CQI standards are not normative standards, but are to be understood as guidelines.

Special processes are those manufacturing processes, where product characteristics may not be verified without the use of distructive testing. The quality of the product must therefore be verified and validated by means of "robust process" parameters and adequate sampling methods.

CQI processes are carried out in the specially described technologies and the relevant procedures. For example, CQI-9 deals with the evaluation of heat treat processes.

The CQI process tables deal with requirements and characteristics related to special processes. CQI audits are carried out according to these tables, as may be applicable to a company. The requirements for each type of process are listed in the process tables.

The requirements of the CQI process tables are valid for the complete supply chain within the automotive supplier industry and thus pave the way for a globally unified and comparative set of standards for special processes. It is up to automotive suppliers to accept the challenge and thus provide proof of setting high technical standards. The acceptance of CQI standards and their further development is currently shown by their expansion into the newly published CQI-23 standard for injection moulding processes.

For the transition periods for new releases of CQI revisions of all "Special Processes" AIAG has not defined any written stipulations in the respective standards.

Here is the statement from AIAG to TopQM: "AIAG recommends using the new revision at your next scheduled assessment" This means that the new edition / version should
be used until the next planned CQI audit.