What is an FMEA and How Can It Help?

Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) is a step-by-step approach for identifying all possible failures in a design, a manufacturing or assembly process.

“Failure modes” means the ways, or modes, in which something might fail.

Failures are any errors or defects, especially ones that affect the customer and can be potential or actual.  They typically include the component, the damage or problem with it and the cause of it

“Effects analysis” refers to studying the consequences of those failures.
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What is Reliability Centered Maintenance?

Does the age of equipment increase the probability of failure?

That was the conventional wisdom until Nowlan & Heap discovered that components have six different types of failure patterns:

• Bathtub – 4%
• Wear Out – 2%
• Fatigue Related – 5%
• Rapid Increase to Random – 7%
• Random Level of Failure – 14%
• Infant mortality – 68%

This means only 11% of failures are age related… 89% are not age related – so why do PM Programs still rely on time-based maintenance (Replacements, Overhauls) they only address 11% of failures.
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What is MTBF and Why You Shouldn’t Use It

Mean Time Between Failure or MTBF is almost universally recognized in maintenance, reliability, and asset management.

Why is that?  And does it actually help an organization improve the reliability of their assets?

The answer is a resounding No.
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Understanding the Various Maintenance Strategies

There are 3 primary types of maintenance strategies utilized:

• Condition Based Maintenance (CBM)
• Time-Based Maintenance (TBM)
• Run to Fail (RTF)

The strategy utilized depends on heavily upon the nature of the failure.

Meaning does it wear out with age or is a random failure independent of time?  Condition based maintenance is acceptable for the random failures, while Time based maintenance works for wearing out type failures.

Lastly, Run to Failure is acceptable when there are no significant consequences in the event of a failure.
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Using Criticality to Determine Your Maintenance Strategy

There are many different methodologies used to determine what maintenance should be done.

Once you include the variants, the number of methodologies can become overwhelming.   By the end of the podcast, you should have an overview of each methodology and when to use them.
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