FMEA – How to complete an FMEA (FMECA) - Step 1 – Form the FMEA Team
In this short series of articles I will be sharing with you the steps to applying FMEA successfully as well as some handy tips to ensure you do not fall foul of the top six reasons FMEA's fail to deliver the required outcomes.
Introduction
In my previous FMEA article I described the 10 steps of FMEA (FMECA) which are: -
STEP 1 – Form the FMEA Team
STEP 2 – Determine the scope of the FMEA
STEP 3 – Define functions (DFMEA) or process purpose (PFMEA)
STEP 4 – Define potential failure modes
STEP 5 – Determine and rank the severity of the effects of the failure modes
STEP 6 – Determine and rank the likely occurrence of the causes of failure
STEP 7 – Establish and rank the all existing design controls
STEP 8 – Calculate RPN and establish priority of and determine actions required
STEP 9 – Plan and implement actions and establish revised RPN
STEP 10 – Close the FMEA process
I also included a free FMEA Template download which I recommend you do by following the link above so that you can closely follow the process steps.
Within this series of articles I will also be referring to a number of tools and techniques that will be supported by other free downloadable tutorials for those of you new to the FMEA process.
In this article I will be covering the step 1 and for the purposes of demonstration, I will concentrate on Design FMEA (DMEA).
Form the FMEA Team
FMEA is a team activity and should not to undertaken by an individual.
Having a team ensures that the required knowledge, experience and different objective views are taken into account at every stage of the FMEA.
There are two elements to the FMEA team, the core team and the support team.
Core Team: the core team are those that are present at every FMEA meeting and are the main contributors to the FMEA output. Typically this team would consist of the Design Engineer, Quality Engineer, customer representative and a supplier representative (for out sourced components/systems/sub-assemblies).
Support Team: could consist of a Process Engineer, Manufacturing representative, process or systems specialist etc.
Support team members would be “on call” to offer specialist knowledge and support to the core team when specific information of data is required.
At this point it is important to identify some important considerations when establishing the FMEA Team.
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Ensure that at least 1 team member has had sufficient FMEA training or experience to lead the process
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Establish clear team roles and responsibilities
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Have a clear agenda for each team meeting
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Ensure that there is full management support for all of the meetings
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Agree communication channels for activities and outputs from the FMEA process
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Ensure that all required data, information and support tools available for each meeting
At the first meeting, both core and support members should be in attendance so that there is awareness from the outset of the objectives and target of the FMEA.
Completing the FMEA Form/Template
The Results FMEA template provides for a record of the FMEA team members and this shoud be completed at the end of the first meeting along with the target item details etc.
Reasons That FMEA’s Fail
I have had over 20 years of experience of the application and consulting in the application of FMEA in the automotive, aerospace and other related industries. In that time I have been able to identify the top 6 reasons for FMEA’s failing to deliver the required outcomes. In no particular order, these are: -
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Failure to clearly understand and define the design functions (DFMEA)
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Poor training of the FMEA team members
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Lack of management support to release people and allow time for the completion of the FMEA process
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Failure to follow through with the actions necessary to reduce the risk of failures
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Little or no communication outside of the FMEA Team
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The scope of the FMEA being too large to be manageable
These are not the only reasons for failure, but are the most common in my experience.
Graham Cripps
Results Consortium Ltd