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Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA)

FMEA is a systematic methodology to identify potential failures, assess associated risks, and prioritize corrective actions. It involves identifying failure modes and their causes, determining occurrence, severity and detection ratings, and calculating a risk priority number. Failure modes are prioritized based on their RPN to focus resources on high risks. However, the traditional FMEA approach has shortcomings like treating risk factors equally and not considering relationships between failures and causes.

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102 views7 pages

Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA)

FMEA is a systematic methodology to identify potential failures, assess associated risks, and prioritize corrective actions. It involves identifying failure modes and their causes, determining occurrence, severity and detection ratings, and calculating a risk priority number. Failure modes are prioritized based on their RPN to focus resources on high risks. However, the traditional FMEA approach has shortcomings like treating risk factors equally and not considering relationships between failures and causes.

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Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA)

Introduction
FMEA is a systematic methodology designed to identify known and potential
failure modes and their causes, as well as to assess the risk associated with
the identified failure modes and prioritize them for proactive interventions,
and to carry out corrective actions.
The main purpose of FMEA is to allow the analysts to prioritize the failure
modes of a system in order to assign the limited resources to the highest risk
items.
The traditional FMEA
The first step is to identify all possible potential failure modes of the system
by a session of systematic brainstorming. After that, criticality analysis is
performed on these failure modes taking into account the risk factors for
occurrence (O), severity (S), and detection (D).
The prioritization of failure modes in FMEA is determined through the risk
priority number (RPN):
RPN = O x S x D
In this equation:

O is the probability or frequency of the failure


S is the seriousness or consequence of the failure
D is the ability to detect the failure before the impact of the effect is
realized

For obtaining the RPN of a potential failure mode, each of the three risk
factors is usually rated on a numerical scale ranging from 1 to 10. The higher
the RPN of a failure mode, the greater the risk is for system reliability.
Traditional ratings for occurrence of a failure mode:
Rating
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3

Probability of failure
Extremely high: failure almost inevitable
Very high
Repeated failures
High
Moderately high
Moderate
Relatively low
Low

Possible failure
rate
1 or 2 in 2
1 in 3
1 in 8
1 in 20
1 in 80
1 in 400
1 in 2000
1 in 15000

2
1

Remote
Nearly impossible

1 in 150000
1 in 1500000

Traditional ratings for severity of a failure mode:


Rating
10

Effect
Hazardous
without
warning

Hazardous
with warning

Very high

High

Moderate

Low

Very low

Minor

Very minor

None

Severity of effect
Highest severity ranking of a failure mode,
occurring without warning, and consequence is
hazardous
Higher severity ranking of a failure mode,
occurring with warning, and consequence is
hazardous
Operation of system or product is broken down
without compromising safe
Operation of system or product may be
continued, but performance of system or product
is affected
Operation of system or product is continued, and
performance of system or product is degraded
Performance of system or product is affected
seriously, and the maintenance is needed
Performance of system or product is less
affected, and the maintenance may not be
needed
System performance and satisfaction with minor
effect
System performance and satisfaction with slight
effect
No effect

Traditional ratings for detection of a failure mode:


Rating

Detection

10

Absolutely
impossible

Very remote

Remote

Criteria
Design control does not detect a potential cause
of failure or subsequent failure mode, or there is
no design control
Very remote chance the design control will detect
a potential cause of failure or subsequent failure
mode
Remote chance the design control will detect a
potential cause of failure or subsequent failure

mode
Very low chance the design control will detect a
Very low
potential cause of failure or subsequent failure
mode
Low chance the design control will detect a
Low
potential cause of failure or subsequent failure
mode
Moderate chance the design control will detect a
Moderate
potential cause of failure or subsequent failure
mode
Moderately high chance the design control will
Moderately
detect a potential cause of failure or subsequent
high
failure mode
High chance the design control will detect a
High
potential cause of failure or subsequent failure
mode
Very high chance the design control will detect a
Very high
potential cause of failure or subsequent failure
mode
Design control will almost certainly detect a
Almost certain potential cause of failure or subsequent failure
mode

The procedure of FMEA


To carry out an FMEA effectively, a systematic approach should be followed:

1) Determine the scope of the FMEA analysis


Clearly defined boundaries establish the issues that are to be considered and
the approaches that the team will take during the analysis.
2) Assemble the FMEA team
Considering the FMEA problem scope defined in the previous step, we must
form a correct team of subject matter experts from a variety of disciplines.
3) Understand the system to be analyzed
For the FMEA to succeed it is important to understand the system to be
analyzed. It is needed to divide the system into subsystems and/or

assemblies and use blueprints, schematics, and flow charts to identify


components and relations among components.
4) Brainstorm failure modes of each component and their effect
The objective is to list all the potential failure modes that could affect quality
and to identify the potential effects of the failure should it occur. For some of
the failure modes there might be only one effect, while for other failures
there may be several effects.
5) Determine the O, S and D for failure modes
Establishing clear and concise descriptions for the points (on a 10-point
scale) on each of the three rating scales is important for better
understanding of the rankings.
6) Calculate the RPN of each failure mode
The RPN is simply calculated by multiplying the risk factors representing the
probability, severity, and detectability for each item. The total RPN of FMEA
can also be calculated by adding the RPNs of all individual failure modes in
order to compare the updated total RPN value once the recommended
actions have been instituted.
7) Prioritize the failure modes for preventive actions
The failure modes can be prioritized by ranking in terms of the RPNs in
decreasing order. Recommended actions for the high-risk failure modes
should be developed to enhance system performance. These actions
normally fall into three categories: eliminating failure modes, increasing
failure detectability, and minimizing losses in the event that a failure occurs.
8) Prepare FMEA report by summarizing the analysis results
The FMEA process should be documented using an FMEA worksheet in order
to capture and communicate all the important information.
9) Calculate the revised RPNs as the failure modes are reduced or
eliminated
Once the recommended actions have been taken to improve the system, the
risk rankings for O, S, and D must be reassessed for further improvement.
The long-term goal is to completely eliminate every single failure, and the
short-term goal is to minimized the failures if not to eliminate them.
Format of an FMEA worksheet:

The terminology in FMEA


Function. Primary purpose or design intent of the item.

Failure mode. Physical description of the manner in which a product could


fail to perform its desired intent as described by the needs, wants, and
expectations of the customers.
Effect of failure. Adverse consequence, local or global, of the failure on the
system.
Causes of failure. List of conceivable root causes assignable to each failure
mode.
Current controls. Methods or actions currently in place to reduce or
eliminate the risk associated with each potential cause of failure.
Recommended actions. Specific actions that can be implemented to
reduce or eliminate the risk associated with potential causes of each failure
mode.

Shortcomings of the traditional FMEA


Even though the traditional FMEA has proven to be a useful risk assessment
tool, it has been considerably criticized in the literature for a vast variety of
reasons. The most important shortcomings are summarized as follows:

The three risk factors (O, S and D) are treated with the same weight,
and their relative importance is not taken into account.
Different combination of risk factors may produce the same value of
RPN, but their hidden risk implications may be totally different.
The three risk factors are difficult to be precisely determine; much
information is often uncertain or vague.
The mathematical formula for calculating RPN is debatable and lacks a
complete scientific basis.
The direct and indirect relationships between failure modes and causes
of failure are not taken into consideration.
The conversion scores is different for the three risk factors: while the
relationship between O and the associated ratings is nonlinear, the D
and the associated ratings have a linear relationship.
The RPN values are not continuous with many holes. Only 120 of the
1000 numbers between 1 and 1000 can be generated from the
multiplication of risk factors.
The RPN method is only measuring from the risk viewpoints while
ignoring the importance of corrective actions. It cannot be used to
measure the effectiveness of corrective actions.

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