Failure Mode Effects Analysis

FEMA
Introduction
 A failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA)
is a procedure in product development and
operations management for analysis of potential
failure modes within a system for classification
by the severity and likelihood of the failures
 A successful FMEA activity helps a team to
identify potential failure modes based on past
experience with similar products or processes,
enabling the team to design those failures out of
the system with the minimum of effort and
resource expenditure, thereby reducing
development time and costs
FMEA analysis cycle
 FMEA Format
Item C O D Action Results
Potential Current Response &
Potential Potential S l c e R
Cause(s)/ Recommended Target S O D R
Failure Effect(s) of e a c Controls t P Action
Mechanism(s) Actions Complete E C E P
Mode Failure v s u e N Taken
Of Failure Date V C T N
s r c
Function Prevent Detect
Step 1 : Occurrence
Step 2 : Severity
Step 3: Detection
Risk Priority Number (RPN)
 RPN = S × O × D
 The failure modes that have the highest RPN
should be
 After these values are allocated, recommended
actions with targets, responsibility and dates of
implementation are noted.
 These actions can include specific inspection,
testing or quality procedures, redesign (such as
selection of new components), adding more
redundancy and limiting environmental stresses
or operating range given the highest priority for
corrective action
Timing of FMEA
 At the beginning of a cycle (new
product/process)
 Changes are made to the operating conditions
 A change is made in the design
 New regulations are instituted
 Customer feedback indicates a problem
Benefits of FMEA
 Contributes to improved designs for products and
processes.
 Higher reliability
 Better quality
 Increased safety
 Enhanced customer satisfaction
 Contributes to cost savings.
 Decreases development time and re-design
costs
 Decreases warranty costs
 Decreases waste, non-value added operations
 Contributes to continuous improvement
Benefits
 Cost benefits associated with FMEA are
usually expected to come from the ability to
identify failure modes earlier in the process,
when they are less expensive to address.
 “rule of ten”
 If the issue costs $100 when it is discovered in
the field, then…
 It may cost $10 if discovered during the final
test…
 But it may cost $1 if discovered during an
incoming inspection.
 Even better it may cost $0.10 if discovered
during the design or process engineering phase.