AIAG-VDA FMEA

 What are AIAG and VDA

FMEA or Failure Modes Effects Analysis was in use for several years since the 1940s, especially in the automotive and manufacturing industries. With the continued use of FMEA, many other industry verticals like aviation, medical equipment, heavy equipment, the agricultural industry also started using FMEA in their operations. FMEA is a tool, better known as a preventive tool that can be used to assess risks and identify potential threats in the company’s design or processes and take necessary actions to address them before they become identified as non-conformities.

FMEAs are carried out by teams and the overall risk is based on the criteria set forth by a company and not by any individual. It is always advisable and better to conduct FMEA in Teams rather than getting it done by an individual. Also, FMEAs are not static wherein once they are created, they do not need any changes. FMEAs are instead living documents that are created and reviewed periodically.

There are two types of FMEAs:

· PFMEA – Process FMEA

· DFMEA – Design FMEA

In the traditional FMEAs, an RPN or Risk Priority Number was used. Many people in due course of time have critiqued the RPN and risk is considered not acceptable is often arbitrary. In the AIAG-VDA process, the RPN is changed to Action Number and the new handbook provides a table in the form of guidance and displays what Action Number means. While the manuals were very effective in the US region, some suppliers had a hard time sticking to the requirements of their customers regarding FMEA.

AIAG and VDA have now harmonized together their previous regional FMEA manuals into one single document. The new AIAG & VDA FMEA Handbook, 1st Edition now promotes the utility of a process-oriented methodology in order to support and assist suppliers to meet the product performance requirements of global automakers.

FMEA is indeed the most commonly used risk analysis approach in the automotive industry and helped suppliers to identify and avert failures in the product development and production of parts processes. The new AIAG & VDA FMEA Handbook provides direction and guidance to all automotive suppliers, including best practices and from AIAG’s and VDA’s earlier handbooks and real-world experiences.

The new methodology is broken down into seven steps approach.

• The first three steps – Planning and Preparation, Structure Analysis and Function Analysis are grouped together and named as System Analysis
• The next three steps – Failure Analysis, Risk Analysis, and Optimization are grouped together as Failure Analysis and Risk Mitigation
• The last step – Results Documentation is labeled under the approach Risk Communication

The new handbook guides in aligning information between the steps in order to make sure there is accuracy and completeness in the FMEAs. The handbook also helps in identifying and assigning priority tasks or activities to the respective actions that focus to minimize risk while also considering severity, occurrence, and detection both individually and in combination with risk-reducing factors. This methodology brings collaboration between the FMEA team, customers, suppliers, and the management and can be executed using spreadsheets or using the FMEA software. Enroll in AIAG-VDA FMA Online Training to learn the objectives of AIAG-VDA and help your company's business operations.