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by Carl S. Carlson Leave a Comment

FMEA Recommended Actions – Insights and Advices

FMEA Recommended Actions – Insights and Advices

Did you know that early FMEA standards did not include recommendations to reduce risk? They limited the analysis to the technical risk, without making specific recommendations. The first time I am aware of that an FMEA standard added a column called “Recommended Actions” was in 1993. Thankfully, it is common practice today to include Recommended Actions in FMEAs.

But what makes for excellent Recommended Actions and what is their role in an FMEA? We’ll begin with the fundamentals.

What are FMEA Recommended Actions?

By definition, in an FMEA, Recommended Actions are the tasks recommended by the FMEA team that can be performed to reduce or eliminate the risk associated with potential cause of failure.

I’ve written two articles on the subject of FMEA Recommended Actions that are part of the FMEA Fundamentals Series. Any review should begin by reading these articles.

“Understanding FMEA Recommended Actions: Actions Speak Louder than Words”

“Understanding FMEA Recommended Actions: Problems and Solutions”

Why do FMEAs need to identify recommendations?

The short answer is the risk associated with the identified failure modes, effect and causes must be reduced to an acceptable level. That is what effective FMEAs should do.

What are qualities of excellent Recommended Actions?

There are at least three:

1. In most cases, when risk is high for a given failure mode and cause, multiple recommendations are needed: one to reduce the Severity risk, if possible; at least one to reduce the Occurrence risk, and possibly one to reduce risk associate with Detection.

Here are three articles on reducing Severity, Occurrence and Detection risk:

“Action Strategies to Reduce Severity Risk”

“Action Strategies to Reduce Occurrence Risk”

“Action Strategies to Reduce Detection Risk”

2. Recommended Actions need to be clear and specific. Examples are included in the above article, “Understanding FMEA Recommended Actions.”

3. Recommended Actions need to fix the cause and reduce the risk associated with the failure mode, effect and cause to an acceptable level. This is essential.

What are common mistakes when identifying Recommended Actions?

1. The most common mistake is to believe that because there is an entry in the Recommended Actions column, somehow that fulfills the requirement. FMEA is not an exercise in filling out a form. It is a team exercise that analyzes designs or processes, identifies risk, and takes positive action to reduce risk.

2. Another common mistake is to believe that a single action will adequately reduce risk. As covered above, multiple actions are usually needed to reduce high risk.

3. Some FMEA teams miss the opportunity to reduce Severity, Occurrence and Detection risk, all three.

Summary

Effective FMEAs use multiple well thought-out recommendations to reduce Severity, Occurrence and Detection risk to acceptable levels for all higher risk issues. This is a goal worth achieving.

Next Article

The next article take up the subject of Quantitative Criticality Analysis that is used in MIL-STD 1629A. I’ll share when and why it is used, and answer the question if this technique can be used in commercial applications?

Filed Under: Articles, Inside FMEA Tagged With: FMEA Recommended Actions

About Carl S. Carlson

Carl S. Carlson is a consultant and instructor in the areas of FMEA, reliability program planning and other reliability engineering disciplines, supporting over one hundred clients from a wide cross-section of industries. He has 35 years of experience in reliability testing, engineering, and management positions, including senior consultant with ReliaSoft Corporation, and senior manager for the Advanced Reliability Group at General Motors.

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Articles by Carl Carlson
in the Inside FMEA series

[popup type="" link_text="Logo Info" ]

Information about FMEA Icon

Inside FMEA can be visually represented by a large tree, with roots, a solid trunk, branches, and leaves.

- The roots of the tree represent the philosophy and guiding principles for effective FMEAs.
- The solid trunk of the tree represents the fundamentals for all FMEAs.
- The branches represent the various FMEA applications.
- The leaves represent the valuable outcomes of FMEAs.
- This is intended to convey that each of the various FMEA applications have the same fundamentals and philosophical roots.

 

For example, the roots of the tree can represent following philosophy and guiding principles for effective FMEAs, such as:

1. Correct procedure         2. Lessons learned
3. Trained team                 4. Focus on prevention
5. Integrated with DFR    6. Skilled facilitation
7. Management support

The tree trunk represents the fundamentals of FMEA. All types of FMEA share common fundamentals, and these are essential to successful FMEA applications.

The tree branches can include the different types of FMEAs, including:

1. System FMEA         2. Design FMEA
3. Process FMEA        4. DRBFM
5. Hazard Analysis     6. RCM or Maintenance FMEA
7. Software FMEA      8. Other types of FMEA

The leaves of the tree branches represent individual FMEA projects, with a wide variety of FMEA scopes and results. [/popup]

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