FMEA: Failure Mode and Effects Analysis

An FMEA follows the principle of identifying potential failures as early as during the product development process by analyzing and assessing possible risks. Then, by planning appropriate actions early, causes of failure can be effectively avoided. In addition to this risk analysis, you bundle valuable knowledge about products and processes in Failure Mode and Effects Analyses. Once this knowledge has been included, you can refer to it again in each new FMEA.

Detect and Avoid Potential Failures Early

Structure of a system FMEA, including the FMEA form

Our integrated solution supports you in executing and documenting standards-compliant design and process FMEAs. The goal of the design FMEA is to detect possible weak points in the product design and to reduce their risks even before the new product is released for production. For a new product, the process FMEA particularly considers all value-added process steps of the planned production, assembly and logistics processes.

These analyses provide a risk assessment of the identified possible faults. Primarily, however, they provide appropriate actions that, when implemented, can effectively minimize the identified risks in the development and manufacture of the product. For example, when creating an FMEA in the Babtec software, you apply the systematic and structured 7-step procedure recommended by the two major automobile associations AIAG and VDA, which has also become established in other industries.

Use Results Efficiently for Further Planning

Actions for avoiding the causes of failures and detecting failures can be tracked in the FMEA module as well as in BabtecQ’s central Action Management. Benefit as well from the option to create control plans or production control plans directly based on a process FMEA. By linking FMEAs, control plans and even inspection plans for the operative inspection processes, the change management integrated into the software conveniently supports you when making necessary adjustments to these documents, without time-consuming synchronization of the data. By means of the integrated software solution, you can also easily return faults that were found in complaints back to the FMEA and take these into account in the future during ongoing development and risk optimization.

Systematically Create and Document FMEAs

Clearly laid-out tree structures help you to carry out complex structural analyses for products and processes. When creating new elements (e.g., functions or failure modes), the software proposes all appropriate entries that have already been used in other FMEAs. During the creation of an FMEA, you can check at any time whether the information saved is complete and plausible. As part of the functional analysis, document all required functions and product or process characteristics. Use the function net to clearly describe, among other matters, the planned range of functions of your product. This is followed by the failure analysis, in which you first identify all possible failure modes by means of the previously determined functions. Then you determine both causes and effects of potentially possible failures by connecting the previously identified failure modes within the failure net.

For the final evaluation of the identified risks, you use standardized evaluation catalogs (VDA, AIAG) or your own specific evaluation schemes. On this basis, you develop suitable optimization measures and decide which new avoidance and/or discovery measures should be implemented to minimize the risks. Methods such as the "task priority" (AP) or the "risk priority number" (RPN) help you determine where there is an urgent need for action and where valuable opportunities for risk minimization arise. With the FMEA software, create the best possible basis for establishing effective actions as well as avoiding potential failures and causes of failure.