A table-based method for teams to systematically identify and rank potential process or product failure modes, and their effects. All possibilities that a product, process or service can fail (the failure modes) are identified with their effects listed. Potential causes for each effect are then listed and ranked by Severity, Occurrence, and Detection factors. These SOD factors are multiplied together to calculate the Risk Priority Number (RPN) for each failure mode effect and cause. Effects and causes with high RPN’s are the most significant risks to the product or system.
FMEA is widely used in design and manufacturing and is now used increasingly for transactional and service processes. FMEA is an inductive (bottom up, brainstorming) method but is not effective in identifying the effects of multiple faults or faults in complex systems. See also Fault Tree Analysis.
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