FMEA: Helping Organizations Discover Failure Points Early

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a tool used to assess the reliability of systems and identify potential failures in projects, processes, products or services.

With FMEA, it is possible to define a plan to proactively correct these potential failures and thus avoid their negative effects.

FMEA is widely used across industries from software development to manufacturing to healthcare, throughout product or process life cycles.

In just about all organizations, FMEA can help team leaders discover failure points early on to improve safety and quality as well as satisfy customers and save money.

FMEA is commonly divided into two categories:

·        Design FMEA

·        Process FMEA

Design FMEA examines the possibilities for product malfunctions, reduced product lifecycle, and safety regulations. Things that should be taken into consideration before designing a product include geometry, tolerances, interfaces with other parts and material properties.

Process FMEA Identifies failures affecting product quality, reduced process reliability, customer complaints, and safety or potential pollution that can be obtained from materials. Important factors include materials used, methods adopted during handling and human concerns.

The aerospace, nautical and automotive industries have used FMEA extensively for many years. As far back as the 1960s, FMEA received considerable attention when NASA used it in their Apollo missions.

Analysts contend that FMEA has been around so long because it works as a preemptive look into identifying potential problems earlier in the design process. This is an important cost savings measure for organizations and agencies because scrap, rework, defects, retesting, and recalls are expensive.

Want to learn more? Tonex offers several courses in FMEA, such as:

FMEA Training (2 days)

FMEA for Medical Devices (2 days)

Applied Failure Mode and Effects Analysis Workshop (2 days)

DFMA Training (2 days)

For more information, questions, comments, contact us