FMEA

✅ Why this step helps you fix problems before they happen

No product is risk-free. But smart teams find weak points before they become failures.

FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) is a structured way to identify where your product might fail, how serious that failure would be, and how to reduce the risk. It helps you focus effort where it matters most—and make your product safer, stronger, and more reliable.

📘 What you’ll learn

  • What could go wrong in your design, assembly, or usage
  • How to assess each failure’s impact, likelihood, and detectability
  • How to prioritise risks for action and improvement
  • How to track mitigation progress with a repeatable method

🛠️ Tools and methods

  • FMEA Worksheet

    A table with columns for failure mode, cause, effect, severity (S), occurrence (O), detection (D), and risk priority number (RPN).

  • Team Brainstorm Session

    Engineers, designers, and testers map possible failures together.

  • Prioritisation by RPN

    Score = S × O × D. Focus on the highest-risk areas first.

  • Linked Mitigation Plans

    Each high-risk item should trigger a design or process response.

  • Iterative Review

    Re-score after updates to check risk has been reduced.

⚠️ Watch-outs

  • Using FMEA too late. Catching risk after production starts is costly.
  • Treating it as paperwork. It only works if taken seriously and updated.
  • Skipping the cross-functional view. Include insights from manufacture, use, and test—not just design.
  • Ignoring moderate risks. Clusters of medium-priority items can still create big issues.

💡 From real-world failures

“A small clip kept snapping during packaging. FMEA flagged it, but we didn’t act—until we lost a month in recalls. Lesson learned.”

– Hardware Product Lead, Home Tech Brand

💡 FMEA isn’t about being pessimistic—it’s about being prepared.

🔗 Helpful links & resources

✍️ Quick self-check

  • Have we listed at least 10 possible failure modes across design and process?
  • Did we assess severity, occurrence, and detection for each?
  • Are we acting on high-priority risks?
  • Is the FMEA being updated as designs or processes change?

🎨 Visual concept (optional)

Illustration: A team reviewing a large FMEA table on screen. Columns are colour-coded by risk (green, yellow, red). One person highlights “Latch fatigue failure – RPN: 168” while another writes mitigation ideas on a whiteboard. Sticky note: “Add detection test at QA stage.”

Visual shows how FMEA brings cross-functional teams together to reduce risk before it becomes reality.
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