Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
In these series of questions, a reader asks about whether system FMEAs in the medical device industry should include human interactions, and the difference between system and application FMEAs.
“The art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it.” Georg Cantor
Do you consider yourself an FMEA beginner or are you more experienced? Challenge yourself with these problems, and see how you do. One of the best ways to learn is by pondering actual application problems and seeing if you can solve them.
Have you ever wondered what are the key ingredients for successful FMEA application in a company? Why are some FMEAs successsful, and others are not? What are the most important factors for uniformly achieving great results? Based on supervising or performing over two thousand FMEAs, six FMEA success factors have been identified, and they are covered in this article.
Nothing succeeds like success.
Alexandre Dumas
What did American inventor and businessman Charles Kettering mean when he said, “A problem well stated is a problem half-solved”? Framing the problem and pondering solutions can be enlightening, and a great way to learn. This article will pose three problems and offer solutions, as a way to learn by doing.
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
Confucius
Nothing can undermine FMEA results more than approaching the subject from the wrong philosophy. In this article readers will learn how use key focus areas to achieve effective FMEAs in all applications.
“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
Thomas Jefferson
Should an FMEA result in design or manufacturing improvements? Should it ensure that tests discover the right problems? What are the objectives of FMEAs? Whether you are new to FMEA or an experienced practitioner, there is always something to learn. This is the first in a series of articles on FMEA that should expand the knowledge of every reader.
“Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.” ~ Henry Petroski
Do you consider yourself new to FMEA, or are you an FMEA expert?
Or somewhere in between?
I’m a great believer that knowledge of any tool such as FMEA, is a lifelong journey. In the new series of articles called Inside FMEA, my intention is to bring to life the subject of FMEA, and provide value to readers from all levels of experience.
Each week I will publish a new article on Accendo. The topics will span the full range of FMEA applications, and offer guidance to real-world challenges that FMEA teams face each and every day. [Read more…]
Carl and Fred discussing the application of Risk Priority Number (RPN) in FMEA procedure. There are limitations to the value of RPNs, and these limitations need to be known and addressed to ensure FMEAs prioritize corrective actions properly.
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Carl and Fred discussing when FMEAs should be done to support product development projects. FMEAs take time and cost money to support, and should be done when a certain level of risk can be effectively addressed by the FMEA procedure.
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Carl and Fred discussing the big picture topic of reliability in our lives, and how our experiences can affect the application of reliability.
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Carl and Fred discussing the application of product and process characteristics in achieving reliability objectives.
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Writing and executing effective reliability plans is a skill that is not often taught in reliability courses or seminars. It falls under the body of knowledge of reliability management, which is a different set of skills than reliability engineering. What is a Reliability Plan, and how should it be developed? What do well-written reliability tasks look like? How detailed should tasks be described, and how can they be written to support easy execution? How do you ensure that your Reliability Plan is successfully implemented to the desired results?
There are dozens of quality and reliability tools. How does a reliability practitioner know which specific tools to use in a new reliability program. Should reliability allocation be used? Which types of FMEAs are needed? What about robust design or design margin analysis? How does one go about selecting the right reliability tools that will be incorporated into an effective reliability plan?
Carl and Fred discussing the need to integrate Design for Reliablity activities throughout the entire organization.
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Carl and Fred discussing the reliability tool called “Root Cause Analysis,” and how RCA can be used in reliability programs.
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