Design FMEA according AIAG VDA Manual

FMEA is a systemic method used to evaluate the failures and their effects. FMEA is used to analyze the systems, products and processes with the goal to eliminates or mitigates the failures.

FMEA was developed by reliability engineers in the late 1950s to study problems that might arise from malfunctions of military systems and then was applied to aerospace industry. The use of FMEA in automotive industry started in 70s and spread across the industry continual, as AIAG and VDA develops FMEA manuals .

Design FMEA is focused on product during design and development phase and helps engineers detect failures at the earliest possible moment then establish necessary actions to eliminate or mitigate then.

The AIAG VDA FMEA Handbook is the new automotive industry reference manual for Failure Mode and Effects Analysis and it was issued by AIAG and VDA in the fall of 2019. The goal of the project was to harmonize best practices from AIAG and VDA into a single and structured approach.

According AIAG VDA recommandations, FMEA shall be conducted in 7 steps:

1. Planning and Preparation
2. Structure Analysis
3. Function Analysis
4. Failure Analysis
5. Risk Analysis
6. Optimization
7. Results Documentation

We, Omnium Software Products team have developed a template for D FMEA - an XLSM file. The goal of this activity was to support the companies and community during transition to this new method. We consider that the first step is to play around then start to review a process, because the understanding of this approach shall be before investing in any of FMEA existent solution.

Anyway, if you decide to invest in a platform/ software, we consider that it has to meet several conditions:

• to be workflow based:
  This is very important, especially for actions management. The FMEA specialist or the owner has to be able to schedule actions (responsible, action, due date) and the software has to monitor the implementation and alert user when the time is closed to due date.
• to allow uploading files:
  Users has to be able to upload proves when actions were implemented, and the software has to alert automatically the owners and specialist by email or other means.
• to be open: Communication between applications is critical now: it is necessary that this solution to be able to read other databases (projects list, products list..) and to provide data by using standard formats like JSON/ XML to other applications.
  In this way you will avoid duplicate work .
• easy to install (including upgrades): Here it is easy to define. We recommend no install. Develop the application as a web-based solution.

You can download this file by clicking here.

Features:

• Instruction for form use integrated
• Hyperlinks to definitions
• AP - action priority automatically calculation
• Severity, Occurence and Detection matrix included
• Easy to acces sections

We are distributing this material for free, according GNU GPL V3 license – it means that you can use it at your free will as long as you will not deny same right by copyrighting the provided material (file and related software). We hope that it will be useful for you!

In 2020 we intend to develop an web application to manage AIAG VDA FMEA in a systemic way. In between, if you are interested in custom-made solutions for automotive industry, you can visit our site - applications .

Process FMEA and Design FMEA templates: