ETQ and Sandalwood Develop AIAG-VDA-Compliant FMEA Solution for Reliance NXG Customers

Automates adherence to guidance from leading quality and risk-management standards

Published: Wednesday, December 14, 2022 - 11:59

(ETQ: Burlington, MA) -- ETQ, part of Hexagon, has announced the availability of an enhanced failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) solution for use with its industry-leading Reliance NXG quality management system (QMS). ETQ developed the solution in partnership with Sandalwood, an engineering and ergonomics services firm with deep automotive expertise.

The AIAG-VDA FMEA software application helps automotive, aerospace, and other discrete manufacturer suppliers perform thorough risk analysis to predict and prevent failures in product design and production processes. The built-in framework ensures compliance with the harmonized international FMEA guide produced by the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) and the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA). Adherence to the combined handbook is becoming a core requirement for suppliers doing business with many of the world’s largest OEMs.

The AIAG-VDA FMEA application is available immediately as an optional enhancement to Reliance NXG, ETQ’s cloud-native enterprise QMS platform. As with all Reliance applications, the enhanced FMEA is flexible and configurable to meet specific customer requirements, and integrates with related quality processes like corrective and preventive actions and nonconformance reporting.

“With our new FMEA application, suppliers can leverage ETQ Reliance to more easily meet and exceed the standards and expectations of leading OEMs,” says David Isaacson, ETQ’s vice president of product marketing. “Today, most FMEA software is stand-alone, point solutions with limited flexibility. The new ETQ solution allows suppliers and OEMs to integrate FMEA into a total QMS solution that connects quality management to the entire product life cycle, and at the same time allows manufacturers to meet today’s standards.”

Automotive, aviation, and other discrete manufacturers, such as Ford and BMW, are moving toward requiring compliance with the AIAG-VDA FMEA standard, some as early as January 2023. Suppliers that don’t adopt the standard risk future work with manufacturers.

The enhanced FMEA application on the Reliance NXG platform automates workflows aligned with the combined AIAG-VDA guidance and helps customers make better quality-planning decisions with features and tools:
• Support for the new 7-step development approach, revised severity, occurrence and detection tables, and action priority methodology
• Design and development of foundation, core, and family FMEAs
• Develop design FMEA
• Develop process FMEA, control plans, and work instructions by product and process families
• Jump-start implementation by importing FMEAs and control plans
• Support for customer-specific format development
• Guided implementation support to ensure successful new process adoption

Customers can learn more at this informational webinar.

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