What are the most important factors to consider when selecting a team for FMEA?

The Team Leader must be a People's man, capable of getting the best out of the Team Members. Remember most times he is not a Senior Management. But he has good understanding of the FMEA process and can obtain necessary inputs from each of the Team member by making them understand the Basics. Remaining team members must be sort of experts for that particular Process, so that their inputs strengthen the FMEA. The Senior Management, at the time of concluding, should get involved and assess the Quality of the FMEA performed. A Customer Representative can take a small part by asking "what if" queries. FMEA made like this, also needs periodical validation. Any failure must lead to a revisit to the FMEA.

The most important thing in selecting a FMEA team is KNOWLEDGE. Knowledge of the customer's needs, the product characteristics, the process characteristics and of the people who will engage the process. Without knowledge in these areas, you'll end up with guesses on what to do.

An FMEA if done correctly and treated as a living document can be a very useful tool. Too many times companies treat FMEAs as just another document for a PPAP package and a single person like a QE or a Project Engineer will pencil whip this. A cross functional team from Engineering, Quality, Operations, Maintenance, Marketing, etc should be assembled to create a good, useable document.

- select a cross functional team from all the departments, consultants and manufacturers. - get someone from similar project team who have done same projects in past to get their learnings of what could be done better. - assign task to someone who is in the room so people have understanding of what the action is.

- get someone from a team who have done similar projects in past. - breakdown the process in to small nodes and discuss each node based on the SME( subject matter expert) - get feedback and expert openion from external team.

I always start FMEA with a small training on tool, methodology and understanding of abbreviations so everyone in the team is aligned on it. - Have a short review of the entire process and what is expected from the end of FMEA process . - best practices is to send a pre- read before the workshop so everyone come prepared with their questions and understanding of both the tool and the process.

Keep a "parking lot" space for items or concerns that get raised that may not necessarily be relevant to the FMEA but will require follow up separately.

Example: Industry 4.0 had been implemented, and its data were used for MRMs and Audits. In one case, the production team observed a significant difference in cycle time when two operations were combined. Despite a week of trials, they couldn't determine the issue. Initially, the team of developers were involved, as the perception was that it was more of a human error than a systemic issue. We discovered that the system hadn't integrated the changes in program characteristics when two operations were combined. The developers made the necessary changes, and the data was accurately captured. The lesson learned was that no personnel in the initial analysis is useless; their input in the first few days can make a significant impact.