What are the best practices to identify potential causes and effects of failure modes?

1 Define the scope and objectives

Before you start your FMEA study, you need to define the scope and objectives of your analysis. What are you trying to achieve? What are the boundaries and assumptions of your process, product, or system? What are the relevant standards, regulations, and customer requirements? By clarifying these questions, you can focus your FMEA on the most critical and relevant aspects.

2 Brainstorm potential failure modes

Next, you need to brainstorm all the possible ways that your process, product, or system could fail to meet the objectives and requirements. You can use tools such as flowcharts, diagrams, checklists, or historical data to help you identify the failure modes. Be as specific and realistic as possible, and consider different scenarios and conditions. For example, what could go wrong during normal operation, maintenance, transportation, or storage?

3 Analyze the causes and effects of failure modes

For each failure mode, you need to analyze the causes and effects of the failure. What are the factors or events that could lead to the failure? What are the consequences or impacts of the failure on the performance, safety, reliability, or customer satisfaction? You can use tools such as the 5 Whys, fishbone diagrams, or fault tree analysis to help you dig deeper into the root causes and effects of failure modes.

4 Prioritize and rate the failure modes

After you have identified and analyzed the failure modes, you need to prioritize and rate them according to their severity, occurrence, and detection. Severity is how serious the effect of the failure is, occurrence is how frequently the failure happens, and detection is how easily the failure can be detected and corrected. You can use a numerical scale or a qualitative scale to assign ratings to each failure mode. Then, you can calculate a risk priority number (RPN) by multiplying the three ratings. The higher the RPN, the higher the risk of the failure mode.

5 Develop and implement corrective actions

Finally, you need to develop and implement corrective actions to reduce or eliminate the risk of the failure modes. You can use tools such as Pareto charts, action plans, or control plans to help you select and prioritize the most effective and feasible actions. For each action, you need to assign responsibilities, deadlines, resources, and measures of success. You also need to monitor and evaluate the results of the actions and update your FMEA accordingly.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?