Many of the techniques and methodologies in the Lean/Six Sigma area have their roots in the automotive industry. While failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) does not originate directly from there, it still sees a lot of active use by companies in this field, and it can bring many benefits to a modern manufacturing plant, as long as its leaders know how to apply it correctly and how to make use of the information it produces for them. FMEA can be a highly effective tool for minimizing the error rate in a system over a longer term and for identifying the underlying problems in any situation of failure, and it’s not hard to find examples of that.

Optimizing Manual Processes Step by Step

A commonly seen example of FMEA in the automotive industry is in manual processes which are carried out in discrete steps. It’s often important to assess the risk level of each of those steps separately, allowing the operator to know when they should be paying more attention. On the other hand, in cases of failure, this can very effectively help guide the investigating team to the root cause of the problem. They can simply target the high-risk steps first and sort the list by that criteria, moving down as they check each one.

The true power of FMEA shines when it comes to breaking down each of those steps into its potential causes and recommended courses of action for example, when it comes to something like applying wax to a car door, you can prepare a list of specific potential failures for each step of the procedure, and the operator can study that list and know where to start looking in case something goes wrong. What’s more, they will also know what details could potentially go wrong, and will be able to direct their attention to those areas when performing the task, minimizing the risk that they will mess up the job.

Optimizing the Construction of Safety Critical Parts

When it comes to cars, safety is a critical feature that has to be observed under a microscope at every step of the production process. FMEA can be used to assign risk levels to each separate part of the process when a worker is constructing a feature that can affect the safety of the car, giving the worker an opportunity to pay more attention to that feature and to potentially double-check it after completing the job.

This also carries over to post-production verification procedures, which can be made significantly simpler and more streamlined with the help of FMEA. The whole plant can work according to a standardized model that allows them to guarantee the safety of the parts they produce, and discard the ones that don’t fit the criteria early on. A proper implementation of FMEA can significantly improve the overall safety of a plant, and it can reduce the expenses of the company in this area.

Conclusion

Failure mode and effects analysis is a technique that should be studied in a lot of detail by people operating in the automotive industry, and there are plenty of examples of its successful use in this area. It doesn’t take long to find ways to apply it in a typical production plant, and as long as you’re motivated to ensure that the work done by your operators is safe and at a high level of quality, this is one of the first steps you should take. There is a lot of information about it out there too, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting up to speed with current trends.

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Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) is a well-known methodology for analyzing points of failure in various environments, and it’s one of the oldest techniques used to that end. The methodology has seen lots of active developments over the years, and it’s very established in many corners of the industry today.

This includes software engineering, and in fact, FMEA is particularly popular in those circles recently, as people have started to pay more attention to preventing issues in the development of complex software. Indeed, despite being rooted in highly advanced technology and a world of constant innovation, software development continues to be a problematic field when it comes to the manifestation of errors in products. A correct implementation of FMEA can result in dramatic improvements in the productivity of an organization in this field.

How FMEA Works in Practice

The goal of FMEA is to identify and analyze potential failure points in the product, and achieve a design in which those problems are predicted and accounted for. One can look at certain types of issues as unavoidable, problems that are guaranteed to present themselves sooner or later, and in this case, the best thing you can do is to simply design the software in a way that it can fail elegantly.

For example, if a certain component of your application crashes, this doesn’t have to bring the whole system down. An intelligent approach to the high-level design can ensure that problems are isolated and don’t spill over into other areas.

FMEA looks at several specific properties of failures in order to categorize them better. The probability that a problem might occur is one of the most important ones; severity is another factor that has to be considered closely. The two usually have a stronger meaning when evaluated together instead of individually, which is why FMEA attempts to structure your knowledge of a failure in a systematic manner.

It’s also important to know what the consequences of a certain failure can be. This concerns both the immediate impact on the surrounding parts of the system, as well as the long-term implications for the system as a whole. For example, in our case of a failing module from above, it’s important to know how this module’s malfunction will affect the whole system if it’s not brought back up in a reasonable timeframe.

On that note, FMEA also identifies the control frequency for a certain malfunction. This means how often the system runs a periodic check to see if there are any problems. Designing your systems in a way that they can catch issues on their own and run a sort of self-maintenance is important for complex software suites, making FMEA a particularly useful approach here.

Working Closely with FMEA Tools

One of the best benefits software engineers have for working with FMEA compared to other industries is that they have immediate access to various specialized tools that can provide a complete FMEA solution. You may sometimes be able to implement the entire system in an in-house manner, using a common tool like Microsoft Excel. However, using a specialized solution like a model-based tool with intuitive visualization can improve your workflow quite a bit.

Not only that, but if your specific software is one where stability is particularly critical, you may even be able to develop a custom-tailored tool to do the job exactly according to your required parameters. Of course, the viability of such a project can depend on many factors, including the size of the organization as a more critical one.

In most cases, the answer is usually somewhere in the middle. The ideal FMEA solution is likely going to be something that’s developed externally, but customized for the needs of your own specific project. If you can build a good relationship with your vendor, this can go a long way.

Conclusion

Understanding the benefits of FMEA and implementing it in a smart, custom-tailored manner is critical for any large organization dealing with software development. The sooner you put a solution in place and ensure that it captures the situation correctly for your specific needs, the more you will benefit in the long run

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