German automakers with a footprint in South Carolina increasingly expect VDA 6.3 process audits from suppliers — a different standard than IATF 16949 or ISO 9001. The P1-P7 process elements and how the three standards actually relate.
VDA 6.3 doesn’t certify a company — it qualifies an individual auditor,
and it audits one specific process, not a whole quality management
system. That distinction trips people up constantly, especially when
IATF 16949 is already part of the conversation.
VDA 6.3 is a process audit standard published by the Verband der
Automobilindustrie (VDA), the German Automotive Industry Association,
through its Quality Management Center. It evaluates whether a specific
product or process is genuinely capable and controlled across its
lifecycle — from project management through production and customer
service — rather than evaluating an organization’s overall quality
management system.
| VDA 6.3 | IATF 16949 | ISO 9001 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Process audit | Management system audit | Management system audit |
| What gets certified/qualified | Individual auditors | The organization | The organization |
| Scope | One specific product or process | The whole automotive QMS | The whole QMS, industry-agnostic |
| Typical trigger | Customer (often German OEM) 2nd-party audit, APQP gate review | Baseline requirement to supply most automotive OEMs | General-purpose QMS baseline |
They’re not competing standards — a supplier is typically IATF
16949-certified as an organization, and VDA 6.3 gets applied on top,
process by process, especially when a German OEM is escalating a specific
quality concern or running a pre-sourcing capability check. Think of IATF
16949 as the baseline license to operate as an automotive supplier, and
VDA 6.3 as a much sharper, process-specific lens a customer can point at
any one line, one part, or one supplier relationship when they need more
confidence than a general certificate provides.
VDA 6.3 organizes its audit around process elements labeled P1 through
P7, covering the product and process lifecycle from potential-supplier
analysis through customer service. P1 (potential analysis) is often run
as a separate pre-sourcing audit rather than bundled with the rest.
Each process element gets scored against a set of audit questions, rolled
up into a percentage, with the overall result typically graded A
(capable), B (conditionally capable, needs an action plan), or C (not
capable) — check the current edition of the standard for the exact
scoring thresholds before treating any specific cutoff as final, since
these details have been refined across editions.
Becoming a qualified VDA 6.3 process auditor isn’t a short course.
Typical prerequisites include ISO 19011 auditor training, working
knowledge of the automotive core tools (APQP, PPAP, FMEA, MSA, SPC), and
several years of industry experience with a meaningful portion of it in
a quality role — the qualification is built for experienced quality
professionals, not an entry point into the field. The process ends in
both a written and an oral exam, with successful auditors registered in
VDA QMC’s database.
That’s worth knowing upfront if you’re evaluating whether to pursue it
yourself or send someone on your team: it’s a meaningful time and cost
investment, appropriate for someone who’s already doing quality audit
work and needs the specific automotive-process-audit credential, not a
general quality-awareness course.
South Carolina’s automotive manufacturing base includes BMW’s
Spartanburg-area plant, Volvo in Ridgeville, and Mercedes-Benz Vans,
along with hundreds of tier-supplier companies feeding them. Suppliers to
German-headquartered OEMs are the ones most likely to face a VDA 6.3
process audit specifically, since it’s standard practice for those
automakers’ supplier quality programs, even when the supplier’s baseline
certification is IATF 16949 rather than anything VDA-specific.
For a supplier in that position, the practical reality is that a
customer can request a VDA 6.3-style process audit as a condition of
keeping or winning business, independent of whatever certification the
plant already holds. Knowing that ahead of time — and knowing which of
your own staff would need the qualification versus which just need to
survive being audited — is worth sorting out before a customer’s audit
notice arrives.
VDA 6.3 auditor qualification isn’t a standalone course in SCMEP’s
current catalog — it’s a specialized credential typically pursued through
AIAG or VDA QMC directly. What we do offer is the QMS foundation this
builds on: AS9100 Overview, ISO
9001:2015 Overview, and our Inspection learning path. As a
NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership affiliate
serving South Carolina manufacturers since 1989, our focus is helping
you build the underlying quality system literacy before you invest in a
specialized auditor qualification.
If your team is navigating automotive customer quality requirements,
you can browse the Quality and Inspection
training catalog or email the training team.
VDA 6.3 and IATF 16949 come up together constantly for South
Carolina’s automotive suppliers. See our related guide on
IATF 16949 for how it
relates to ISO 9001 and the five automotive core tools it requires.
No. IATF 16949 certifies an organization’s overall automotive quality management system. VDA 6.3 audits one specific product or process for capability and control, and it qualifies individual auditors rather than certifying a company.
IATF 16949 certification doesn’t automatically satisfy a customer’s VDA 6.3 requirement — they evaluate different things. A German OEM or its supply chain may still require a VDA 6.3 process audit on a specific product line even at an already IATF-certified supplier.
Broadly, A indicates the process is capable, B indicates conditional capability requiring an action plan, and C indicates the process is not capable. Exact scoring thresholds are defined in the current edition of the standard.
Typically quality engineers and internal auditors at automotive suppliers, especially those supplying German OEMs, who need to run process audits either for their own plant or as part of a supplier development program.
