Why first-article approval saves you money

A first article is the first part off a new setup, fully inspected against the drawing before the rest of the batch runs.

It feels like a delay. In practice it's the cheapest insurance you'll buy: catching a misread dimension or a wrong datum on part one costs minutes; catching it on part five hundred costs a rework or a scrapped batch.

We don't run production until the first article is signed off. It's why our scrap rates are low and our reorders are painless.