failure mode effects analysis (fmea)

**Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)** systematically **lists potential failures and their impacts** — scoring severity, occurrence, and detectability to prioritize mitigation actions before production. **What Is FMEA?** - **Definition**: Systematic analysis of potential failure modes. - **Process**: Identify failure modes, assess effects, score risks, prioritize actions. - **Purpose**: Proactive reliability improvement, risk reduction. **FMEA Steps**: Identify failure modes, determine effects, assess severity (S), estimate occurrence (O), evaluate detectability (D), calculate RPN = S×O×D, prioritize high RPN items, implement mitigation. **Scoring (1-10)**: Severity (1=minor, 10=catastrophic), Occurrence (1=rare, 10=frequent), Detectability (1=easy to detect, 10=undetectable). **Risk Priority Number (RPN)**: Product of S×O×D (range: 1-1000), higher RPN = higher priority. **Applications**: Product design, process development, supplier qualification, continuous improvement. **Benefits**: Proactive risk identification, quantified prioritization, documented analysis, cross-functional collaboration. FMEA is **proactive checklist** — turning expert judgment into quantifiable risk priorities to prevent reliability issues from reaching the field.