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Failure Modes & Effects AnalysisWednesday 24th February 2010 There are many different methods of performing a risk assessment however some methods can be more appropriate than others. For products that fall within the General Product Safety Directive, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a great technique to identify the risks and help you to remove or reduce them. A Design FMEA will assist to identify the failures, causes and their effects and any actions, as early as practical so that changes can be timely and of minimum cost. A Process FMEA is a pro-active tool help eliminate product and process failures through studying the manufacturing process. It will aim to minimise production and prevent product failures reaching the customer. The process starts by performing functional analysis on the product and/or process, which will look and document every associated function. The functional analysis will then be used to help identify all of the failure modes of each function, so the effects, potential causes and design controls for each mode can be assessed and appropriately rated. Finally the ratings are multiplied to give each failure mode a risk priority number, which is used to help prioritise the risks. All that is left to do is to recommend and to act upon any suitable actions to either eradicate or reduce the risk and to ensure that no new risks have been introduced as a result of any changes. If you are interested in learning more about Design and Process FMEAs, Wemtech are running a series of workshops in 2010 that are designed to give you the knowledge and ability to perform your own Design and Process FMEAs on your own products and processes.
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