In one line: Before failures happen, systematically list how each part of a design or process could fail, what that would do, why it would happen, and how you’d catch it. Then act on the worst first.
Core idea
FMEA is a structured way to imagine failure while it is still cheap to prevent. A cross-functional team works through a design (DFMEA) or a manufacturing process (PFMEA) item by item, asking how each could fail and with what consequence. The automotive industry, including the Ford handbook used in the course [1], made it a standard practice, and the American Society for Quality publishes a widely used overview of the procedure.
How it works
For each function, item or process step:
- Failure mode: how could it fail to do its job?
- Effect: what would the customer or the next process experience?
- Severity (S): how bad is the effect? Usually rated 1–10.
- Causes: why might the failure occur?
- Occurrence (O): how likely is each cause? Rated 1–10.
- Current controls: how do we prevent it, or detect it before it reaches the customer?
- Detection (D): how likely are those controls to catch it? Rated 1–10, where 10 means almost certainly not detected.
- Prioritize: traditionally by the risk priority number, . Newer practice looks first at high severity, then at severity combined with occurrence, so that a catastrophic but rare failure isn’t hidden by a low product.
- Act: design changes, added controls or tests, with owners and dates. Then re-rate.
In practice
FMEA is only as good as the team’s imagination and honesty. It works best:
- early, while the design can still change;
- with manufacturing, test and service in the room;
- when it is revisited as the design evolves.
It fails when it becomes a spreadsheet completed for a review and never opened again. A good habit is to seed it with real history (field returns, test escapes, past programs’ problems), so the team isn’t only imagining failures from scratch.
Questions to ask yourself
- Does my project have a living FMEA, and when was it last updated?
- Which failure mode on my design has high severity but weak detection?
- Have manufacturing and service contributed their failure modes, or only design?
Connections
- Purpose: Reliability, Risk Management. Complementary strategy: Robust Design.
- Process side: Design for Manufacturing. What happens without it: Challenger Launch Decision.
- Capabilities exercised: Inquiry, Responsibility and Urgency to Deliver, Connecting Across Disciplines.
Sources
- Ford Motor Company - FMEA Handbook [1]
- ASQ overview of failure mode and effects analysis (asq.org).