How FMEA Worksheets can Help (and Hinder)
Abstract
Chris and Carl discuss FMEA worksheets (we know … boring) … but can be incredibly helpful and useful. So what are they and how do they help us?
Key Points
Join Chris and Carl as they discuss FMEA worksheets, which are an important part of a Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) that help us identify the potential issues with a product or process before they become issues – meaning we can (hopefully) help us design them out of existence when it is cheap and easy to do.
Topics include:
- What is a FMEA worksheet? … it is a table that documents the conduct of a FMEA, including things like functions, tolerances, failure modes, defects, their corresponding likelihoods along with things we can do to address them.
- What is ‘pre-population’? Before you conduct a FMEA, there will likely be a list of things that we might already know about how our process or product might fail. ‘Pre-population’ involves putting these failure scenarios into yor worksheet before you start your FMEA. BUT … humans are not good at seeing what is missing. In other words, if we see that a FMEA worksheet already has some ideas about how something might fail, our brains often struggle to brainstorm more ways. The solution? Keep any existing knowledge in the ‘back pocket’ of the facilitator, allowing the team to brainstorm everything from scratch, and then see if there is anything missing from those pre-existing ideas.
- What are the media you can use? Software or spreadsheets. There are FMEA software packages out there that construct FMEA worksheets for you. Or …Â you construct your own using a worksheet (Chris prefers spreadsheets as you can tailor them to your product, process or system).
- Chris’s tip? Start with a COMPLETELY BLANK SPREADSHEET for your team – except for a single ‘remarks’ column. This might sound crazy, but it is less intimidating. You need to have a list of column headings prepared and also in your back pocket, but if you insert and label columns as you go it helps the team focus. It also means the ‘remarks’ column is always ‘right there’ and not to the right of 20 + empty column headings.
- Carl’s tip? Before starting the workshop, hand out a bunch of yellow post-it notes and give them around 45 minutes to come up with as many issues that are going to ‘keep them up at night.’ Put them up on a wall, take a photo of them, write them down or do whatever you need to keep them at the forefront of everyone’s minds during the workshop.
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A great disucssion and some great tips for the listeners on facilitation.
I do similar to the post it notes to brainstorm the vital few FM we should be looking at. I get the participants to write down some dot points of their concerns in a word doc and after some time (to allow everyone to have a serious crack at it) get them to copy their notes into in a shared file (typically a OneNote page). Tell them not to worry about duplicates as we can merge later.
From here, I bring up the file on the screen and we start to brainstorm these ideas further and explore if there is anything else of concern with the component identified (looking for other mechanisms or causes) or if the mechanism/cause is of concern anywhere else within the system.
Once they’ve been heard, I bring out my “vital few” that I have discovered from pre-analysis of their downtime data (e.g. Pareto Analysis) and see if it aligns or what their thoughts are on what the data says.
I’ll then send the group on a break, and then orgainse any missing ones from my FMECA “pre-work” sheet and place them onto “parking lot” to be addressed when we get to that particular component. That parking lot is visible on a whiteboard and is there for the group to see what issues still need solving outside of the workshop or to be covered off when we get to those sections (group to remind me/hold me accountable).
It is pretty much the same principle of the post-its, but just a paperless version of it.
Love it Nik. I think that every good facilitator has their own particular flavour. I think it is also worth mentioning to our listeners/readers that when it comes to duplicate failure modes, there are often ‘grey’ areas … in that perhaps four different people come up with four slightly differently worded failure modes, that can be summarized as (for example) two failure modes … looks like you are across it