What strategies can be used to reduce severity risk in an FMEA?

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”
Winston Churchill

strategy

The Oxford English dictionary defines “strategy” as “a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.”

Reference the article Understanding FMEA Severity Risk – Part 1 which discusses how Severity is defined and applied in FMEA.

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Selecting Which FMEAs to Do

FMEAs take time and cost money. They should be done when a certain level of risk can be effectively addressed by the FMEA procedure. Preliminary Risk Assessment is a procedure that uses company-determined criteria to select which FMEAs to do.

“The key is to schedule your priorities.” ― Steven Covey

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Getting to Root Cause with “Five Whys”

There is no more important task in an FMEA than correctly identifying the “Cause.” Finding the root cause is the heart and soul of FMEA procedure. When you have the right cause, it opens the door to solutions. When you have the wrong cause, nothing gets accomplished.

By continuing to ask “why,” the team will be able to discover the progression of cause-and-effect relationships behind a problem and the root cause that is below the surface.

Wisdom begins in wonder – Socrates

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The Proper Application of Failure Mechanisms in FMEA

The rule is simple. For high-risk issues, the FMEA team needs to properly identify the cause(s) and associated failure mechanism(s). So, what exactly is a failure mechanism?

“Nature never breaks her own laws.” Leonardo da Vinci

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