Failure Mode and Effect Analysis
FMEA is used for anticipating errors in a product or process, and finding ways of preventing them.
Effective use of the FMEA is at the planning stage of products and processes to focus attention on avoiding problems.
It applies to manufacturing and service industries.
FMEA should not be used if you need a Quality improvement tool. It is about avoidance, not active improvement.
By using this technique we can achieve confidence of taking a proactive approach to avoiding mistakes. Provides a safety net to make sure you haven’t overlooked any obvious problems.
When it is used, be careful like all predictive tools, it isn’t foolproof. You can spend lot of time predicting things that won’t happen, and missing the things that will.
Although FMEA applies in production and manufacturing, it can also be used in the service processes.
Example
A small company planned to send out an advertising mailshot for an information product they had developed.
In order to make sure things went smoothly, they worked out simple FMEA and took action to prevent the problems they had anticipated
In spite of this the mailshot was successful, because the mailing list was out of date and had mismatched names and organizations. The company received high irate phone calls from those who had been misaddressed.
The company now knows that bought in databases have to be extensively verified, but the FMEA was obviously no substitute here for experience.
