FMEA

Introduction
Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a systematic, proactive method for evaluating a process to identify where and how it might fail and to assess the relative impact of different failures, in order to identify the parts of the process that are most in need of change. FMEA includes review of the following:

Steps in the process Failure modes (What could go wrong?) Failure causes (Why would the failure happen?) Failure effects (What would be the consequences of each failure?) Successful development of an FMEA requires that the analyst include all significant failure modes for each contributing element or part in the system. FMEAs can be performed at the system, subsystem, assembly, subassembly or part level. The FMECA should be a living document during development of a hardware design. It should be scheduled and completed concurrently with the design. the FMECA would be of little value to the design decision process if the analysis is performed after the hardware is built. While the FMECA identifies all part failure modes, its primary benefit is the early identification of all critical and catastrophic subsystem or system failure modes so they can be eliminated or minimized through design modification at the earliest point in the development effort; therefore, the FMECA should be performed at the system level as soon as preliminary design information is available and extended to the lower levels as the detail design progresses

History
Procedures for conducting FMECA were described in US Armed Forces Military Procedures document MIL-P-1629.By the early 1960s, contractors for the U.S. (NASA) were using variations of FMECA or FMEA under a variety of names. NASA programs using FMEA variants included Apollo, Viking, Voyager, Magellan, Galileo, and Skylab. The civil aviation industry was an early adopter of FMEA, with the Society for Automotive Engineers (SAE) publishing ARP926 in 1967.After two revisions, ARP926 has been replaced by ARP4761, which is now broadly used in civil aviation. During the 1970s, use of FMEA and related techniques spread to other industries. In 1971 NASA prepared a report for the U.S. Geological Survey recommending the use of FMEA in assessment of offshore petroleum exploration. 1973 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report described the application of FMEA to wastewater treatment plants. Then FMEA moved into the food industry in general.
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Use of FMEA by the automotive industry had begun by the mid 1970s. [16] The Ford Motor Company introduced FMEA to the automotive industry for safety and regulatory consideration in 1993 the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) first published an FMEA standard for the automotive industry

Benefits
Major benefits derived from a properly implemented FMECA effort are as follows: 1. It provides a documented method for selecting a design with a high probability of successful operation and safety. 2. A documented uniform method of assessing potential failure mechanisms, failure modes and their impact on system operation, resulting in a list of failure modes ranked according to the seriousness of their system impact and likelihood of occurrence. 3. Early identification of single failure points (SFPS) and system interface problems, which may be critical to mission success and/or safety. They also provide a method of verifying that switching between redundant elements is not jeopardized by postulated single failures. 4. An effective method for evaluating the effect of proposed changes to the design and/or operational procedures on mission success and safety. 5. A basis for in-flight troubleshooting procedures and for locating performance monitoring and fault-detection devices. 6. Criteria for early planning of tests.

Implementation
In FMEA, failures are prioritized according to how serious their consequences are, how frequently they occur and how easily they can be detected. FMEA is used during the design stage with an aim to avoid future failures (sometimes called DFMEA in that case). Later it is used for process control, before and during ongoing operation of the process. The outcomes of an FMEA development are actions to prevent or reduce the severity or likelihood of failures, starting with the highest-priority ones. FMEA helps select remedial actions that reduce cumulative impacts of life-cycle consequences (risks) from a systems failure (fault).

Step 1: Occurrence
In this step it is necessary to look at the cause of a failure mode and the number of times it occurs. This can be done by looking at similar products or processes and the failure modes that have been documented for them in the past. A failure mode is given an occurrence ranking (O) from1(no known occurrences) to 10(very high rate of occurrence)
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Step 2: Severity
Determine all failure modes based on the functional requirements and their effects. A failure mode in one component can lead to a failure mode in another component, thereby. A failure effect is defined as the result of a failure mode on the function of the system as perceived by the user. In this way it is convenient to write these effects down in terms of what the user might see or experience. Each effect is given a severity number (S) from 1 (not severe) to 10 (critical), based on cost and/or loss of live or quality of live.

Step 3: Detection
The means or method by which a failure can be discovered by an operator under normal system operation or can be discovered by the maintenance crew by some diagnostic action or automatic built in system test. . Detection is usually rated on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 means the control is absolutely certain to detect the problem and 10 means the control is certain not to detect the problem (or no control exists)

After these three basic steps, risk priority numbers (RPN) are calculated

Risk priority number (RPN)

RPN play an important part in the choice of an action against failure modes. They are threshold values in the evaluation of these actions. After ranking the severity, occurrence and detectability the RPN can be easily calculated by multiplying these three numbers: RPN = S O D The failure modes that have the highest RPN should be given the highest priority for corrective action. This means it is not always the failure modes with the highest severity numbers that should be treated first. There could be less severe failures, but which occur more often and are less detectable.

FMEA Procedure
(Again, this is a general procedure. Specific details may vary with standards of your organization or industry.) 1. Assemble a cross-functional team of people with diverse knowledge about the process, product or service and customer needs. Functions often included are: design, manufacturing, quality, testing, reliability, maintenance, purchasing (and suppliers), sales, marketing (and customers) and customer service.

2. Identify the scope of the FMEA. Is it for concept, system, design, process or service? What are the boundaries? How detailed should we be? Use flowcharts to identify the scope and to make sure every team member understands it in detail. 3. Fill in the identifying information at the top of your FMEA form.

4. Identify the functions of your scope. Ask, What is the purpose of this system, design, process or service? What do our customers expect it to do? Usually you will break the scope into separate subsystems, items, parts, assemblies or process steps and identify the function of each. 5. For each function, identify all the ways failure could happen. These are potential failure modes 6. For each failure mode, identify all the consequences on the system, related systems, process, related processes, product, service, customer or regulations. These are potential effects of failure. Ask, What does the customer experience because of this failure? What happens when this failure occurs? 7. Determine how serious each effect is. This is the severity rating, or S. Severity 8. For each failure mode, determine all the potential root causes. Use tools classified as cause analysis tool. List all possible causes for each failure mode on the FMEA form. 9. For each cause, determine the occurrence rating, or O. This rating estimates the probability of failure occurring for that reason during the lifetime of your scope. 10. For each cause, identify current process controls. These are tests, procedures or mechanisms that you now have in place to keep failures from reaching the customer. 11. For each control, determine the detection rating, or D

12. (Optional for most industries) is this failure mode associated with a critical characteristic? (Critical characteristics are measurements or indicators that reflect safety or compliance with government regulations and need special controls.) If so, a column labeled Classification receives a Y or N to show whether special controls are needed. Usually, critical characteristics have a severity of 9 or 10 and occurrence and detection ratings above 3. 13. Calculate the risk priority number, or RPN, which equals S O D. Also calculate Criticality by multiplying severity by occurrence, S O. These numbers provide guidance for ranking potential failures in the order they should be addressed. 14. Identify recommended actions. These actions may be design or process changes to lower severity or occurrence. They may be additional controls to improve detection. Also note who is responsible for the actions and target completion dates.

15. As actions are completed, note results and the date on the FMEA form. Also, note new S, O or D ratings and new RPNs. An example on FMEA for ATM machine:

An example for FMEA on drug administration in hospital: