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FMEA

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is an industrial strength risk assessment tool which gives a step-by step approach to recognize and evaluate all potential failures in a design manufacturing or assembling process of a product or a process. FMEA identifies actions that could eliminate or reduce the chances of the occurrence of the potential failure and tracks the corrective actions and their effects. It also document the entire decision process

FMEA can be viewed as an assessment tool, as it is used to diagnose the opportunities or as a prevention tool, as it used to prevent high level risks.

Purpose of FMEA

The purpose of FMEA is to recognize and evaluate the failure and the effects that failure has on the system and take actions to eliminate or reduce failures, starting with the highest-priority failures. FMEA also aims to reduce the time and cost of the operation by improving the teamwork and promoting accountability.

Elements of FMEA

FMEA consists of following elements, as

Severity(S) – Severity is the worst potential outcome of a failure, which is determined by the degree of injury, system damage etc. Severity is the impact of failure, numbers from 1 to 10 are assigned to each failure effect, where 1 refers to the failure with no/slight effect and 10 refers to that failure with most critical effect with most critical effect. The range of Severity is 1 <S <10. The following table gives the different values in the Severity scale and corresponding effects.

 

Rank	Effect
10	Hazardous without warning
9	Hazardous with warning
8	Very High
7	High
6	Moderate
5	Low
4	Very Low
3	Minor
2	Very Minor
1	None

Occurrence (O) – Occurrence refers to the number of times a cause of a failure will occur. Occurrence is considered to be a design weakness, numbers form 1 to 10 are assigned to each failure, where 1 refers to that failure which is unlikely to occur and 10 refers to that failure which is most likely to occur failure which is most likely to occur The range of Occurrence is 1 <O <10. The following table represents the different values in occurrence scale and the corresponding effect.

 

Rank	Effect
10	Very High (1 in 2)
9	Very High (1 in 3)
8	High(1 in 8)
7	High(1 in 20)
6	Moderate(1in 80)
5	Moderate (1 in 400)
4	Moderate (1 in 2,000)
3	Low(1 in 15,000)
2	Low( 1 in 150,000)
1	Remote ( 1 in 1,500,000)

 

Detection (D)– Detection refers to the ability of designed checks and inspections to detect and remove defects of failure modes. Numbers from 1 to 10 are assigned to each failure effect, where 1 refers to that failure which is easy to detect and 10 refers to that failure is easy to detect and 10 refers to that failure which is almost certain that we can’t detect. The range of detection is 1 <D <10. The following table represents the different values in the detection scale and the corresponding effect.