DEFINITION OF FMEA

FMEA is an engineering "reliability tool" that:

1. Helps to define, identify, prioritize, and eliminate known and/or potential failures of the system, design, or manufacturing process before they reach the customer, with the goal of eliminating the failure modes or reducing their risks

2. Provides structure for a cross-functional critique of a design or a process

3. Facilitates inter-departmental dialog (It is much more than a design review.)

4. Is a mental discipline "great" engineering teams go through, when critiquing what might go wrong with the product or process

5. Is a living document that reflects the latest product and process actions

6. Ultimately helps prevent and not react to problems

7. Identifies potential product- or process- related failure modes before they happen

8. Determines the effect and severity of these failure modes

9. Identifies the causes and probability of occurrence of the failure modes

10. Identifies the controls and their effectiveness

11. Quantifies and prioritizes the risks associated with the failure modes

12. Develops and documents action plans that will occur to reduce risk