Our FMEA tool helps you manage the control of your special characteristics (or key characteristics) in an optimized, pertinent fashion throughout the entire design and manufacturing processes.
Special characteristics are used extensively in the automotive sector as characteristics in which projection of one reasonable variation can have an impact on:
- Product safety
- Compliance with regulations or government standards
- Customer satisfaction
These three reasons make the control of special characteristics vital. Coherence must be maintained between product characteristics, process operation parameters, the Design FMEA, the Process FMEA, the control plan, and inspection procedures or measurement procedures.
Identifying special characteristics
There are several starting points in identifying the special characteristics for a product:
- Identification through the failure mode effects
- Customer requirements
- Expertise, Design Office feedback
The FMEA tool identifies these characteristics from the get-go at the characteristics identification step. This can be integrated via:
- The plan using Infra Convert
- The connector through a link with the BOM or the product architecture
- Direct key in when the information is available
Special characteristics-Design FMEA automatic link
When using our tool, you will no longer need to manually control the special characteristics. The coherence and links happen automatically.
- Does a product characteristic lead to a safety or regulatory risk? If it does, this characteristic will be automatically identified as safety or regulatory.
We can meet our customers’ requirements according to the data we have, especially for the functional requirements:
We identify the effects and their connections with the characteristics in the Design FMEA chart
- A control of the link is carried out for the characteristic at the level of the cause. An incoherence alert allows tracing the differences between the product characteristics levels.
Special characteristics-Process FMEA/Control plan automatic link
- Does a process parameter let you create a product characteristic categorized as special or key? Then the process setting will be just that: special or key. In a Process FMEA, you can include it as a cause and then identify the weak points in your manufacturing process parameters:
- You can see the link established for overall control.
- Does the control plan integrate special design or process characteristics? In this case, the category icon will be input directly in the control plan from the product or process requirements.
Extract of a control plan containing two special characteristics:
Communicate effectively about how you manage your special characteristics
The reports available in the FMEA tool allow you to explain how you manage your special characteristics easily. You can:
- Edit the list of the characteristics, including by filtering those that are safety or regulatory related:
- Filter the Design FMEA and Process FMEA charts, and the requirements control of the special or key characteristics:
- Display the critical risks connected to the special characteristics by using the range of available reports.
- Display the remaining actions linked to the special characteristics by examining the action plans in a Gantt chart form:
