Failure Modes and Effects Analysis

Intro

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) identifies potential failures and their causes and impacts. It matters because it prioritizes risks and drives preventive actions in processes and designs.

Key points:

• Systematic approach to find failure modes and effects.
• PFMEA focuses on process failures and mitigations.
• Common use cases: production quality (BPM), reliability engineering (Tech), service error prevention (Apps).
• Pitfall: listing failures without implementing corrective actions.

Examples:

• Analyzing onboarding steps to prevent identity verification errors.
• Assessing data load to mitigate schema mismatch issues.
• Ranking failure modes in payment processing to reduce chargebacks.

In practice:

Score severity, occurrence, and detection; prioritize high‑risk items and track mitigations to closure.

Related terms: root-cause-analysis; six-sigma; critical-quality

FAQs:

Q: What is PFMEA?
A: Process FMEA targeting failures in process steps.

Q: How do we sustain improvements?
A: Implement controls and monitor with periodic reviews.

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