FMEA Automation Framework Using Public Failure Data and LLMs: Application to NHTSA Recall and Complaint Datasets

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to automate the FailureModeandEffectsAnalysis (FMEA) process using the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) vehicle recall and complaint data. It establishes a practical foundation for manufacturers to identify potential defects early and improve quality management.<br/>Methods: We utilized NHTSA recall data from 1979 to 2024, applied text preprocessing, Large Language Model (LLM)-based sentence embedding, and K-means clustering to group similar failure modes. Human-readable failure modes were identified using Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) keywords and LLM-generated labels. Risk Priority Numbers (RPNs) were quantitatively evaluated based on severity, occurrence, and detection metrics. The proposed framework was validated using recent recall data.<br/>Results: Application of the proposed methodology to the top ten manufacturing-processdefects demonstrated the potential to prevent 935 recalls from the past three years. We present a practical approach to significantly reduce recall rates and improve manufacturing quality.<br/>Conclusion: Our framework enables manufacturers to efficiently analyze and categorize data via RPN calculation, facilitating early identification of failure modes, prevention of potential defects, reduced recall response times, and improved safety