FMEA Advantages

FMEA has been successfully applied in many diverse areas. Some of its advantages are as follows [8,9]  

The applications of FMEA in the area of health care are available in Refs. [10-12]. 

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A summary of each of the key tools and techniques considered to be important in the product development process is given in Appendix III. This covers such techniques as FMEA, QFD, DFA/DFM and DOE. Included for each is a description of the tool or technique, placement issues in product development, key issues with regard to implementation, and the benefits that can accrue from their use, and finally a case study. It would be advantageous next, however, to determine exactly what a tool or technique does. In general, the main engineering activities that should be facilitated by their use are (Huang, 1996) ... 

The FMEA is a useful tool with an excellent pedigree however, it should never be blindly conducted without a thorough understanding of its advantages and limitations. 

The primary advantages of an FMEA are that critical single-point failures can be identified and that reliability can be evaluated in detail. It may identify areas or parts with poor reliability and allow early and cost-effective design changes. If it is performed functionally early in the project, it may reduce the amount of more detailed FMEA needed. 

Software System Hazard Analysis This type of analysis is conducted similar to a hardware system hazard analysis (SHA), analyzing software functional processing steps to determine whether they may have any particular hazardous effect on the system. The analysis utilizes a hazard-risk index to illustrate the severity of each potential failure. The main advantage to this method is in its ability to positively identify safety-critical hardware and software functions as well as consider the effect of the human element in system software operations. The results of the software SHA, which identifies single-point failures or errors within a system, can often be used to assist in the development of a software fault tree analysis or, to some degree, a system FMEA. However, as with the other various SWHA techniques briefly described above, this method is also time-consuming and costly to perform. 

Educated to at least HNC level in mechanical engineering, experience in quality improvement in the automotive industry would be a distinct advantage. A working knowledge of SPC, FMEA, DOE, and problem solving techniques is essential. 

Where could FMEA/PWIECA he applied and what is it for These are very pertinent questions, which are answered when one goes through the application area of FMEA/ FMECA. There are a few distinct advantages or benefits from FMEA/FMECA. However, there are limitations too. All these are discussed next to get a good appreciation for the system ... 

Some of the main advantages of performing FMEA are as follows [3,8,9] ... 

The advantages of the described fuzzy rule based method and grey theory method for application to FMEA of ships can be summarised as follows (Pillay (2001), Pillay and Wang... 

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