Failure Mode & Effect Analysis (FMEA)

FMEA is applied in various industries to identify and evaluate the effects of failures and to prioritize them by impact severity. FMEA can be particularly useful in hazard identification and in systematically analyzing complex processes or products on a subsystem, assembly or component basis. The FMEA steps include;

• collect relevant system or product information
• establish the purpose, scope of analysis & expertise required
• assess the product or process in terms of its logical subsystems, functions and location and record them in the tabular FMEA format (see chart below)
• determine the failure modes for each item in the table on a subsystem basis
• identify the failure causes and current controls for each mode
• devise rating schemes and assign ratings for likelihood and severity
• assess failure mode treatment options, costs and priority actions