What are the common challenges and barriers to stakeholder participation in FMEA?

In my experience moving slow to explain a process in the introduction of a quality workshop, helps the participants. Break the early sessions down into smaller sessions focused on delivering instructions, and describing the process, and schedule. Use workshop time for brainstorming and data collection, then bring the raw data back in a presentable fashion on the next session, so the team starts with a picture of their early efforts. Make sure there is space for group activities and a pleasant environment.

Always start with the problem clearly identified. This is a golden rule in quality, you can't fix what you don't understand, and if you don't understand something you lose interest. Identifying the problem is best supported by a current state workflow for the subject at hand, which will allow for subsystems to be identified. Engage the group for recommendations or to identify missing steps and/or subsystems before dividing tasks for workgroups to be selected to work on in facilitated brainstorming sessions. During group activities a proper mix of team members is essential for each group. Being sure there are subject matter experts regarding the process being reviewed on each team, but also end users of the products from that process.

Some companies normally consider FMEA as a burden and or a tool for documentation purposes only. A well done FMEA will require a group of individual with experience and some time allocated to that. In the program schedules it is overlooked and not considered a task. In case it is acknowledged as "task", it is confined to engineering restricting the scope of FMEA.

I agree but sometimes the perspective of other stackholders arenot calibrated enough to the business requirements. Some maturity is required for FMEA participants and sometimes junior teams are allocated to this task.

Leadership buy-in should be established early to know you have the commitment of the organization to make this a successful review. One way to communicate this to leadership is by identifying the metrics that are being impacted and how they translate into effectiveness with customer satisfaction with the product. Having leadership support helps establish a team to work with, and the FMEA facilitator should group the members into working groups, and assign tasks with deliverables, and a metric goal of 100% for meeting those deliverable on time (being allowed to adjust the deliverable time if falling behind, with justification).

One time at work, we faced significant issues with our Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) process due to lack of coordination and integration, which are common challenges and barriers to effective stakeholder participation. These challenges included misalignment of schedules, which made it difficult to gather all necessary stakeholders for meetings, and siloed departments, which led to fragmented information and incomplete analysis. Additionally, inconsistent communication channels resulted in misunderstandings and delays, ultimately compromising the thoroughness and reliability of the FMEA outcomes.

I would like to enphasize is mostly of the FMEAS I have seen are either products already beyond concept phases and unfortunately post-facto FMEAS in prodcuts already developed for documentation purposes only. The FMEA at innovation, concept phase is something I haven't seen yet.

No or insufficient definition of scope and boundaries of FMEA will mean that it becomes a never ending exercise, what is one of the obstacles in getting the right personnel engagement.

Edison, Quality/Product Approval drove many FMEA meetings. Prior to approval but still a ways down the design timeline, not up front. Experienced individuals met with younger engineers but then the leadership tired of not being able to launch due to failures during testing. Test plans and values were defined during FMEA efforts but when product failed to meet those requirements the tests were blamed. Too many engineers felt they knew better or that their designs would not be subject to the same design sensitivities. No backup plans were in place to accommodate the possibility of failure: schedule was king, cost queen, and quality was the Kings illegitimate child. The queen had no use for a child who was not her own.

Many organizations have sacred cows. Areas that must be avoided some for possibly valid reasons others for political reasons. Every document must be considered in terms of any potential liability the creation of it might create. Items such as this weaken the value of the FMEA process.