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 …  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.

Enjoy an episode of Speaking of Reliability. Where you can join friends as they discuss reliability topics. Join us as we discuss topics ranging from design for reliability techniques to field data analysis approaches.

Show Notes

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