Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

  • Home
  • About
    • Contributors
  • Reliability.fm
    • Speaking Of Reliability
    • Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast
    • Quality during Design
    • Way of the Quality Warrior
    • Critical Talks
    • Dare to Know
    • Maintenance Disrupted
    • Metal Conversations
    • The Leadership Connection
    • Practical Reliability Podcast
    • Reliability Matters
    • Reliability it Matters
    • Maintenance Mavericks Podcast
    • Women in Maintenance
    • Accendo Reliability Webinar Series
  • Articles
    • CRE Preparation Notes
    • on Leadership & Career
      • Advanced Engineering Culture
      • Engineering Leadership
      • Managing in the 2000s
      • Product Development and Process Improvement
    • on Maintenance Reliability
      • Aasan Asset Management
      • AI & Predictive Maintenance
      • Asset Management in the Mining Industry
      • CMMS and Reliability
      • Conscious Asset
      • EAM & CMMS
      • Everyday RCM
      • History of Maintenance Management
      • Life Cycle Asset Management
      • Maintenance and Reliability
      • Maintenance Management
      • Plant Maintenance
      • Process Plant Reliability Engineering
      • ReliabilityXperience
      • RCM Blitz®
      • Rob’s Reliability Project
      • The Intelligent Transformer Blog
      • The People Side of Maintenance
      • The Reliability Mindset
    • on Product Reliability
      • Accelerated Reliability
      • Achieving the Benefits of Reliability
      • Apex Ridge
      • Metals Engineering and Product Reliability
      • Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics
      • Product Validation
      • Reliability Engineering Insights
      • Reliability in Emerging Technology
    • on Risk & Safety
      • CERM® Risk Insights
      • Equipment Risk and Reliability in Downhole Applications
      • Operational Risk Process Safety
    • on Systems Thinking
      • Communicating with FINESSE
      • The RCA
    • on Tools & Techniques
      • Big Data & Analytics
      • Experimental Design for NPD
      • Innovative Thinking in Reliability and Durability
      • Inside and Beyond HALT
      • Inside FMEA
      • Integral Concepts
      • Learning from Failures
      • Progress in Field Reliability?
      • R for Engineering
      • Reliability Engineering Using Python
      • Reliability Reflections
      • Testing 1 2 3
      • The Manufacturing Academy
  • eBooks
  • Resources
    • Accendo Authors
    • FMEA Resources
    • Feed Forward Publications
    • Openings
    • Books
    • Webinars
    • Journals
    • Higher Education
    • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • 14 Ways to Acquire Reliability Engineering Knowledge
    • Reliability Analysis Methods online course
    • Measurement System Assessment
    • SPC-Process Capability Course
    • Design of Experiments
    • Foundations of RCM online course
    • Quality during Design Journey
    • Reliability Engineering Statistics
    • Quality Engineering Statistics
    • An Introduction to Reliability Engineering
    • Reliability Engineering for Heavy Industry
    • An Introduction to Quality Engineering
    • Process Capability Analysis course
    • Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process course
    • Return on Investment online course
    • CRE Preparation Online Course
    • Quondam Courses
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Live Events
  • Calendar
    • Call for Papers Listing
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Calendar
  • Login
    • Member Home

by Dianna Deeney Leave a Comment

QDD 070 Use FMEA to Design for In-Process Testing

Use FMEA to Design for In-Process Testing

Our manufacturing friends are approaching us with a problem.

They want to test the product during manufacturing. The way the product is currently designed doesn’t let them do this, or not easily.

Can we make a design change so they can test?

 

Imagine that they’re coming to us with this question before we’ve completed the design. Can they really see the future?

Perhaps, with strategic use of FMEA. We talk through a scenario of how to do it.

 

View the Episode Transcript

What can you do today?

Work from your Design FMEA and identify components or functions that are critical. Communicate that with the manufacturing process engineering team and work with them on controls to mitigate risks during manufacturing.

Then, turn the tables: Ask the manufacturing process engineers what features of the design could help them with manufacturing. They’ll help you incorporate ideas so you can Design for Manufacturability.

Citations:

These other QDD episodes expand on some concepts:

Design Specs vs. Process Control, Capability, and SPC

Prevention Controls vs. Detection Controls

Use FMEA to Choose Critical Design Features

 

Episode Transcript

Our manufacturing friends are approaching us with a problem. They want to test the product during manufacturing so that they can ensure that it still functions after a certain process step, or that it’s still meeting minimum requirements. After they’ve done some processing and assembled components, the way the product is currently designed, doesn’t let them do this or not easily. Can we make a design change so they can test? Let’s talk more about this after the brief introduction.

Hello, and welcome to Quality during Design the place to use quality thinking to create products others love for less. My name is Dianna. I’m a senior level quality professional and engineer with over 20 years of experience in manufacturing and design. Listen in and then join the conversation at qualityduringdesign.com.

Our process engineering/manufacturing development friends want to change the design so that they can test it in-process. Meaning they’re in the middle of manufacturing and assembling components and they want to stop the assembly, perform a test to make sure that things are still right or correct, and then continue on with the manufacturing process to finish the product.

What are reasons that they’d want to test? Why would they want to do this? Well, one example is maybe the components are exposed to something above its limits. They could be concerned about a component getting damage during manufacturing, and that could be from lots of different things. It could be from electrostatic discharge, if you’re dealing with circuit components. Fumes from adhesive, corroding or building up a film on a component. Maybe a component is exposed to residual heat from a bonding process. Or maybe there’s some force from assembly that they’re concerned about damaging another component.

What kind of tests might they want to perform in-process, during the manufacturing proces? They may want a functionality test or a performance test. They might want to test something out electrically or perform a physical test. Or maybe there’s even some visual examinations that they want to do.

Imagine that they’re coming to us with this question before we’ve completed the design.

Can they really see the future? Well, maybe if we’ve got an experienced team, that’s looking at how things might happen. How would this be possible: to see into the future? Well, through strategic use of FMEA (failure mode and effects analysis).

We’re design engineers. So, if we’ve done a design FMEA, we’re going to have a list of potential failures that could occur and their causes. Let’s say part of our design includes a circuit board and one of the failures is functional failure because the board breaks. There could be several causes for the board breaking. Maybe it was exposed to electrostatic discharge, maybe the solder joint broke, or if there’s another failure.

The process engineers are figuring out how to make the product, including installing the circuit board component. They’ll be figuring out steps of assembly. They’ll start a manufacturing process FMEA and it’ll be following the steps of their assembly process. They’ll also look at the design FMEA (or they should). They’ll look at the design FMEA for the circuit board component and see that it could fail from ESD, a break in the solder joint,or another failure.

Now they’ll look at where their manufacturing process interfaces with the circuit board. Could something about their process introduce these causes and lead to a circuit board break? And they decide that the chances are pretty good: that, yes, there is something about their manufacturing process that could introduce these causes and cause a circuit board break.

Then they want to look into controls. They can add some prevention controls, like the ESD mats, or they can manage the forces at assembly. They decide they also want a detection control because this failure is associated with a high severity effect. So even if they do have preventive actions put in place, they still want to check it and be able to detect if there was still a problem.

If they can test the partially assembled product before they finish it, they’ll be able to better manage manufacturing. They can better do their qualifications. In all, it could be less reworks, less scrap and less issues in final testing…there would be a lot of benefits to adding a detection control.

Back to our “imagine this” scenario, where the manufacturing process engineers come to us with this ask before the design is completed. Could they really do this just by thinking about what could potentially happen by using FMEAs early in development?.We just did!

Now we, the design engineers, can look at how we can adjust or modify our design on paper to allow for an in-process manufacturing test that’s intended to catch problems with the circuit board before the product is finished being manufactured.

We’re adding detection controls for manufacturing during the design process, and we’re doing it early at a time when we still have wiggle room in the design itself – it’s less costly for us to make a change. We haven’t done verification tests, yet, verifying our design against its requirements. And the suppliers haven’t started customizing components either. So now is THE best time to be asked to change the design.

What’s today’s insight to action? We can do design FMEA at concept development. In addition to that, we can use design FMEA to communicate with the process engineering team. If we have a function or a component that is severe, likely to happen and/or difficult to detect, we can tell them. We point it out: We did our preliminary design FMEA. These components are critical. This is how it can fail. Can you note this as an important requirement for the manufacturing process?

And then we can turn the tables around. We’ve given them information. Now we can ask what we can do for them: Ask them if they think they’ll want to do in-process inspections or tests and what that might look like. How would they need the design to work to be able to do that? Now we’re asking our manufacturing process engineers for manufacturing requirements so we can better design for manufacturability.

FMEA provides us a way to capture our ideas and our expertise and knowledge and communicate it with other people on our teams. And it helps us to manage this data early in the concept phases when we’re still wondering, “What if?”

If you like the content in this episode, visit Quality during Design.com, where you can subscribe to the weekly newsletter to keep in touch. This has been a production of Deeney enterprises. Thanks for listening!

 

Filed Under: Quality during Design

About Dianna Deeney

Dianna is a senior-level Quality Professional and an experienced engineer. She has worked over 20 years in product manufacturing and design and is active in learning about the latest techniques in business.

Dianna promotes strategic use of quality tools and techniques throughout the design process.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Quality during Design podcast logo

Tips for using quality tools and methods to help you design products others love, for less.


by Dianna Deeney
Quality during Design,
Hosted on Buzzsprout.com
Subscribe and enjoy every episode
Google
Apple
Spotify

Recent Episodes

QDD 128 Leveraging Proven Frameworks or Concept Development

QDD 127 Understanding Cross-Functional Collaboration

QDD 126 Exploring the Problem Space: A Key Principle for Robust Product Design and Project Success

QDD 125 Exploring Product Development and AI Through Literature

QDD 124 Design for User Tasks using an Urgent/Important Matrix

QDD 123 Information Development in Design, with Scott Abel – Part 2 (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

QDD 122 Information Development in Design, with Scott Abel – Part 1 (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

QDD 121 Crafting Effective Technical Documents for the Engineering Field

QDD 120 How to use FMEA for Complaint Investigation

QDD 119 Results-Driven Decisions, Faster: Accelerated Stress Testing as a Reliability Life Test

QDD 118 Journey from Production to Consumption: Enhancing Product Reliability

QDD 117 QDD Redux: Choose Reliability Goals for Modules

QDD 116 Reliability Engineering during Design, with Adam Bahret (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

QDD 115 QDD Redux: 5 Options to Manage Risks during Product Engineering

QDD 114 The Instant Glory of Projects

QDD 113 What to do about Virtual Meetings

QDD 112 QDD Redux: How to self-advocate for more customer face time (and why it’s important)

QDD 111 Engineering with Receptivity, with Sol Rosenbaum (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

QDD 110 Don’t Wish for Cross-Functional Buy-in on Product Designs – Plan to Get It!

QDD 109 Before You Start Engineering Solutions, Do This

QDD 108 QDD Redux Ep. 4: Statistical vs. Practical Significance

QDD 107 QDD Redux Ep. 3: When it’s Not Normal: How to Choose from a Library of Distributions

QDD 106 QDD Redux Ep. 2: How to Handle Competing Failure Modes

QDD 105 QDD Redux Ep. 1: How Many Do We Need to Test?

QDD 104 The Fundamental Thing to Know from Statistics for Design Engineering

QDD 103 What to do for Effective and Efficient Working Meetings

QDD 102 Get Design Inputs with Flowcharts

QDD 101 Quality Tools are Legos of Development (and Their 7 Uses)

QDD 100 Lessons Learned from Coffee Pod Stories

QDD 099 Crucial Conversations in Engineering, with Shere Tuckey (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

QDD 098 Challenges Getting Team Input in Concept Development

QDD 097 Brainstorming within Design Sprints

QDD 096 After the ‘Storm: Compare and Prioritize Ideas

QDD 095 After the ‘Storm: Pareto Voting and Screening Methods

QDD 094 After the ‘Storm: Group and Explore Ideas

QDD 093 Product Design with Brainstorming, with Emily Haidemenos (A Chat with Cross Functional Experts)

QDD 092 Ways to Gather Ideas with a Team

QDD 091 The Spirits of Technical Writing Past, Present, and Future

QDD 090 The Gifts Others Bring

QDD 089 Next Steps after Surprising Test Results

QDD 088 Choose Reliability Goals for Modules

QDD 087 Start a System Architecture Diagram Early

QDD 086 Why Yield Quality in the Front-End of Product Development

QDD 085 Book Cast

QDD 084 Engineering in the Color Economy

QDD 083 Getting to Great Designs

QDD 082 Get Clarity on Goals with a Continuum

QDD 081 Variable Relationships: Correlation and Causation

QDD 080 Use Meetings to Add Productivity

QDD 079 Ways to Partner with Test Engineers

QDD 078 What do We do with FMEA Early in Design Concept?

QDD 077 A Severity Scale based on Quality Dimensions

QDD 076 Use Force Field Analysis to Understand Nuances

QDD 075 Getting Use Information without a Prototype

QDD 074 Finite Element Analysis (FEA) Supplements Test

QDD 073 2 Lessons about Remote Work for Design Engineers

QDD 072 Always Plot the Data

QDD 071 Supplier Control Plans and Design Specs

QDD 070 Use FMEA to Design for In-Process Testing

QDD 069 Use FMEA to Choose Critical Design Features

QDD 068 Get Unstuck: Expand and Contract Our Problem

QDD 067 Get Unstuck: Reframe our Problem

QDD 066 5 Options to Manage Risks during Product Engineering

QDD 065 Prioritizing Technical Requirements with a House of Quality

QDD 064 Gemba for Product Design Engineering

QDD 063 Product Design from a Data Professional Viewpoint, with Gabor Szabo (A Chat with Cross Functional Experts)

QDD 062 How Does Reliability Engineering Affect (Not Just Assess) Design?

QDD 061 How to use FMEA for Complaint Investigation

QDD 060 3 Tips for Planning Design Reviews

QDD 059 Product Design from a Marketing Viewpoint, with Laura Krick (A Chat with Cross Functional Experts)

QDD 058 UFMEA vs. DFMEA

QDD 057 Design Input & Specs vs. Test & Measure Capability

QDD 056 ALT vs. HALT

QDD 055 Quality as a Strategic Asset vs. Quality as a Control

QDD 054 Design Specs vs. Process Control, Capability, and SPC

QDD 053 Internal Customers vs. External Customers

QDD 052 Discrete Data vs. Continuous Data

QDD 051 Prevention Controls vs. Detection Controls

QDD 050 Try this Method to Help with Complex Decisions (DMRCS)

QDD 049 Overlapping Ideas: Quality, Reliability, and Safety

QDD 048 Using SIPOC to Get Started

QDD 047 Risk Barriers as Swiss Cheese?

QDD 046 Environmental Stress Testing for Robust Designs

QDD 045 Choosing a Confidence Level for Test using FMEA

QDD 044 Getting Started with FMEA – It All Begins with a Plan

QDD 043 How can 8D help Solve my Recurring Problem?

QDD 042 Mistake-Proofing – The Poka-Yoke of Usability

QDD 041 Getting Comfortable with using Reliability Results

QDD 040 How to Self-Advocate for More Customer Face Time (and why it’s important)

QDD 039 Choosing Quality Tools (Mind Map vs. Flowchart vs. Spaghetti Diagram)

QDD 038 The DFE Part of DFX (Design For Environment and eXcellence)

QDD 037 Results-Driven Decisions, Faster: Accelerated Stress Testing as a Reliability Life Test

QDD 036 When to use DOE (Design of Experiments)?

QDD 035 Design for User Tasks using an Urgent/Important Matrix

QDD 034 Statistical vs. Practical Significance

QDD 033 How Many Do We Need To Test?

QDD 032 Life Cycle Costing for Product Design Choices

QDD 031 5 Aspects of Good Reliability Goals and Requirements

QDD 030 Using Failure Rate Functions to Drive Early Design Decisions

QDD 029 Types of Design Analyses possible with User Process Flowcharts

QDD 028 Design Tolerances Based on Economics (Using the Taguchi Loss Function)

QDD 027 How Many Controls do we Need to Reduce Risk?

QDD 026 Solving Symptoms Instead of Causes?

QDD 025 Do you have SMART ACORN objectives?

QDD 024 Why Look to Standards

QDD 023 Getting the Voice of the Customer

QDD 022 The Way We Test Matters

QDD 021 Designing Specs for QA

QDD 020 Every Failure is a Gift

QDD 019 Understanding the Purposes behind Kaizen

QDD 018 Fishbone Diagram: A Supertool to Understand Problems, Potential Solutions, and Goals

QDD 017 What is ‘Production Equivalent’ and Why Does it Matter?

QDD 016 About Visual Quality Standards

QDD 015 Using the Pareto Principle and Avoiding Common Pitfalls

QDD 014 The Who’s Who of your Quality Team

QDD 013 When it’s Not Normal: How to Choose from a Library of Distributions

QDD 012 What are TQM, QFD, Six Sigma, and Lean?

QDD 011 The Designer’s Important Influence on Monitoring After Launch

QDD 010 How to Handle Competing Failure Modes

QDD 009 About Using Slide Decks for Technical Design Reviews

QDD 008 Remaking Risk-Based Decisions: Allowing Ourselves to Change our Minds.

QDD 007 Need to innovate? Stop brainstorming and try a systematic approach.

QDD 006 HALT! Watch out for that weakest link

QDD 005 The Designer’s Risk Analysis affects Business, Projects, and Suppliers

QDD 004 A big failure and too many causes? Try this analysis.

QDD 003 Why Your Design Inputs Need to Include Quality & Reliability

QDD 002 My product works. Why don’t they want it?

QDD 001 How to Choose the Right Improvement Model

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about articles and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

© 2025 FMS Reliability · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Cookies Policy