Failure Mode Effect Analysis – A review

Introduction
Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA)
FMEA were first developed as a formal design methodology in the 1960s by the aerospace industry with
their obvious reliability and safety requirements. Later, its use spread to other industries, such as the
automotive, oil and
natural gas. FMEA aims to identify and prioritize possible imperfections in products and processes.
FMEA analyses
 Potential failure modes of product or machine,
 Potential effects of failure,
 Potential causes for failure (like Material defects, Design deficiencies,
 Processing and manufacturing deficiencies, and Service condition etc.)
 Assesses current process controls, and
 Determines a risk priority factor.
FMEA is an essential function in design, from concept through development. Quality and reliability of
products and manufacturing processes are critical to the performance of the final products. They are
also important indices for meeting customer satisfaction. In order to fulfill customer requirement for
quality and reliability, some actions for assuring the quality and reliability of products or processes
should be taken by all engineers involved. One of the most powerful methods available for measuring
the reliability of products or process is FMEA. Customers are placing increased demands on companies
for high quality, reliable products. The increasing capabilities and functionality of many products are
making it more difficult for manufacturers to maintain the quality and reliability. Traditionally,
reliability has been achieved through extensive testing and use of techniques such as probabilistic
reliability modeling. These are techniques done in the late stages of development. The challenge is to
design in quality and reliability early in the development cycle. The cause and effect diagram is used to
explore all the potential or real causes (or inputs) that result in a single effect (or output). Causes are
arranged according to their level of importance, resulting in a depiction of relationships and hierarchy
of events. This can help you search for root causes, identify areas where there may be problems, and
compare the relative importance of different causes. There are several types of FMEA’s; some are used
much more often than others. FMEA’s should always be done whenever failures would mean potential
harm or injury to the user of the end item being designed. FMEA is a reliability procedure which
documents all possible failures in a system design within specified ground rules. It determines, by
failure mode analysis, the effect of each failure on system operation and identifies single failure points,
which are critical to mission success or crew safety.
In general, FMEA is a systemized group of activities designed to:
 recognize and evaluate the potential failure of a product/process and its effects,
 identify actions, which could eliminate or reduce the chance of potential failure occurring,
  document process
The purpose of the FMEA is to take actions to eliminate or reduce failures, starting with the highest-
priority ones. It may be used to evaluate risk management priorities for mitigating known threat-
vulnerabilities. In FMEA, failures are prioritized according to three dimensions:
1) How serious their consequences are,
2) How frequently they occur,
3) How easily they can be detected.
Good FMEA methodology allows for the identification and documentation of potential failures of a
system and their resulting effects.

Total Productive Maintenance(TPM)

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a unique Japanese philosophy, which has been developed based
on the productive maintenance concepts and methodologies. This concept was first introduced by M/s
Nippon Denso Co. Ltd. of Japan, a supplier of M/s Toyota Motor Company, Japan in the year 1971.
Total productive maintenance is an innovative approach to maintenance that optimizes equipment
effectiveness, eliminates breakdowns and promotes autonomous maintenance by operators through
day-to-day activities involving total workforce. Nakajima (1989), a major contributor of TPM, has
defined TPM as an innovative approach to maintenance that optimizes equipment effectiveness,
eliminates breakdowns, and promotes autonomous maintenance by operators through day-to-day
activities involving the total workforce In this stage eight activities are carried which are called eight
pillars in the development of TPM activity. Of these four activities are for establishing the system for
production efficiency, one for initial control system of new products and equipment, one for improving
the efficiency of administration and are for control of safety, sanitation as working environment.

Eight Pillars of TPM

1. 5S: TPM starts with 5S. Problems cannot be clearly seen when the work place is unorganized.
Cleaning and organizing the workplace helps the team to uncover problems. Making problems visible
is the first step of improvement. The meaning of 5S is SEIRI
- Sort out, SEITON – Organize, SEISO - Shine the workplace, SEIKETSU – Standardization,
SHITSUKE - Self-discipline.
2. Autonomous Maintenance: This pillar is geared towards developing operators to be able to take
care of small maintenance tasks, thus freeing up the skilled maintenance people to spend time on more
value added activity and technical repairs. The operators are responsible for upkeep of their equipment
to prevent it from deteriorating.
3. Continuous Improvement (KAIZEN): Kai" means change, and "Zen" means good (for the
better). Basically kaizen is for small improvements, but carried out on a continual basis and involve all
people in the organization. Kaizen is opposite to big spectacular innovations. Kaizen requires no or little
investment. The principle behind is that "a very large number of small improvements are more effective
in an organizational environment than a few improvements of large value. This pillar is aimed at
reducing losses in the workplace that affect our efficiencies. By using a detailed and thorough procedure
we eliminate losses in a systematic method using various Kaizen tools. These activities are not limited
to production areas and can be implemented in administrative areas as well.
4. Planned Maintenance: It is aimed to have trouble free machines and equipments producing
defect free products for total customer satisfaction. This breaks maintenance down into 4 "families" or
groups such as Preventive Maintenance, Breakdown Maintenance, Corrective Maintenance,
Maintenance Prevention
5. Quality Maintenance: It is aimed towards customer delight through highest quality through
defect free manufacturing. Focus is on eliminating non-conformances in a systematic manner, much
like Focused Improvement. We gain understanding of what parts of the equipment affects product
quality and begin to eliminate current quality concerns, then move to potential quality concerns.
6. Education & Training: It is aimed to have multi-skilled revitalized employees whose morale is
high and who has eager to come to work and perform all required functions effectively and
independently. Education is given to operators to upgrade their skill.
7. Office TPM: Office TPM should be started after activating four other pillars of TPM (JH, KK, QM,
PM). Office TPM must be followed to improve productivity, efficiency in the administrative functions
and identify and eliminate losses. This includes analyzing processes and procedures towards increased
office automation. Office TPM addresses twelve major losses. They are Processing losses.
8. Safety, Hygiene and Environment Control: In this area focus is on to create a safe workplace
and a surrounding area that is not damaged by our process or procedures. This pillar will play an active
role in each of the other pillars on a regular basis. A committee is constituted for this pillar which
comprises representative of officers as well as workers. The committee is headed by Senior vice
President (Technical). Utmost importance to Safety is given in the plant. Manager (Safety) is looking
after functions related to safety. To create awareness among employee’s various competitions like safety
slogans, Quiz, Drama, Posters, etc. related to safety can be
organized at regular intervals.
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is used as a measure when evaluating the result of TPM.
 OEE = Availability (A) × Performance Efficiency (P) × Rate of Quality (Q)
where
 Availability (A) = Operating Time / Planned Production Time
 Operating Time = Planned Production Time – Down Time
 Planned Production Time= Shift Length – Breaks
 Performance Efficiency (P)= Ideal Cycle Time / (Operating Time / Total Pieces)
 Ideal Cycle Time = Shift Length / Scheduled Number of Products
 Quality Rate (Q) = Good Pieces / Total Pieces
 Good Pieces = Total Pieces – Reject Pieces
Process Failure Mode Effect Analysis-PFMEA is the basis of process reliability research in
manufacturing. With the development of equipment reliability designing in our country, the reliability
problem in producing process has become a weak aspect in improving reliability of equipment. In the
design process, PFMEA is the important basic technology of improving equipment productive
reliability. The PFMEA technique evaluates the potential failure of a product or process and its effects,
identifies what actions could be taken to eliminate or minimize the failure from occurring and
documents the whole procedure. It is used from the initial planning stages of designing and processing
a product through to the end of its life. K.G. Johnson, M.K. Khanb (2003) described a study made into
the application of PFMEA in a sample of suppliers to an automotive manufacturing company in the UK.
The objectives of the research were to study the concerns and inhibitors that PFMEA users have,
establish how the effectiveness could be determined, and evaluate PFMEA use as a problem prevention
technique and to recommend best practice. The research methodology included the use of interviews,
workshops and questionnaires involving 150 quality approved suppliers. Conclusions were drawn to
show that the PFMEA technique has its limitations, caused by a number of issues. Recommendations
for overcoming these limitations of the PFMEA process are presented.

Design Failure Mode Effect Analysis-The information input to design FMEA consists of
customer inputs and specifications. Based on customer requirements, the potential failure modes are
formed. All the possible functional failures in product design must be caught at the development of the
design FMEA report. A well-trained and balanced design FMEA team must be established to initiate
the FMEA process and to embed reliability concerns in the product design process. Sheng-Hsien (Gary)
Teng (1995) developed an approach to integrate FMEA, product design, and process control to one
complete closed loop to establish an overall quality control plan. First discussed the FMEA procedure.
Then, the procedure will be separated into two domains – the product design domain and the process
control domain. Design FMEA and process FMEA will be demonstrated, and the integration among
design, control, and reliability analysis for a product illustrated.

Fussy Logic and Design Failure Mode Effect Analysis-Failure Mode and Effect
Analysis (FMEA) is a popular problem prevention methodology. It utilizes a Risk Priority Number
(RPN) model to evaluate the risk associated to each failure mode. The conventional RPN model is
simple, but, its accuracy is argued. A fuzzy RPN model is proposed as an alternative to the conventional
RPN. The fuzzy RPN model allows the relation between the RPN score and Severity, Occurrence and
Detect ratings to be of non-linear relationship, and it may be a more realistic representation. John B.
Bowles (1995) described a new technique, based on fuzzy logic, for prioritizing failures for corrective
actions in a Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA). Two fuzzy logic based approaches
for assessing criticality are presented. The first is based on the numerical rankings used in a
conventional Risk Priority Number (RPN) calculation and uses crisp inputs gathered from the user or
extracted from a reliability analysis. The second, which can be used early in the design process when
less detailed information is available, allows fuzzy inputs and also illustrates the direct use of the
linguistic rankings defined for the RPN calculations.

Integrated Failure Mode Effect Analysis-One of the major limitations of FMEA, which
has not been pointed in any investigation, is that severity rates are determined only with respect to
organization’s point of view, not according to its customers. For customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction
the FMEA has been integrated with other different approaches. The integrated FMEA links quality
control tools together and turns data into information, so the FMEA report is no longer a text file only.
It is a living document that helps design and process engineers do their jobs better. Arash Shahin (2003)
proposed a new approach to enhance FMEA capabilities through its integration with Kano model.
Which evolves the current approaches for determination of severity and “risk priority number” (RPN)
through classifying severities according to customers’ perceptions. It supports the nonlinear
relationship between frequency and severity of failure. Also a new index called “correction ratio” (Cr)
is proposed to assess the corrective actions in FMEA. The findings of a short case study highlight the
gap between managers and customers in prioritizing a set of failures and the difference between RPN
and Cr prioritizations, caused by target failure frequencies. The proposed approach enables
managers/designers to prevent failures at early stages of design, based on customers who have not
experienced their products/services yet.

Modified Failure Mode Effect Analysis-FMEA (Failure Mode Effect Analysis) is a widely
used reliability design and analysis method. It depends on the analyzer’s experience and skills greatly,
so the result of FMEA to large-scale complex systems is usually not satisfactory. It is getting more
difficult to apply FMEA analysis to large-scale integrated systems with highly complicated structures
and logical relations. G. Q. Huang (2000) proposed to employ the World Wide Web (WWW, web)
technology to provide FMEA services on the internet/intranets & discussed the design, development
and initial evaluation of a prototype web-based FMEA system on the internet/intranet. Web-based
FMEA provides better support for teamwork. Different functions of diverse disciplines which are
geographically distributed can make their individual contributions simultaneously. Users may use
different web browsers to connect to the FMEA web server at the same time to make simultaneous
contributions from different points of view. Resulting web based FMEA systems require no installation
or maintenance but offer remote and simultaneous access and therefore better teamwork.

Discussion
A FMEA is an analytical quality planning tool dedicated to the identification of the main potential
failure modes and their associated effects at the product, service, process, and/or design stages. Its
effective use could lead to numerous reductions (improvements) in:
• Internal defects (during and after the manufacturing process)
• Customer complaints
• Failures in the field
In addition, successful application of a FMEA could lead to improved customer satisfaction and services
produced by reliable manufacturing processes. In order to survive every industry has to improve
productivity by utilizing resources like machinery, men, and material as optimally as possible. Every
manufacturing industry facing huge losses/wastage occurs in the manufacturing shop floor. This waste
is due to operators, maintenance personal, process, tooling problems and non-availability of
components in time etc. Other forms of waste includes idle machines, idle manpower, break down
machine, rejected parts etc. are all examples of waste. The quality related waste are of significant
importance as they matter the company in terms of time, material and the hard earned reputation of
the company. There are also other invisible wastes like operating the machines below the rated speed,
startup loss, breakdown of the machines and bottle necks in process. Zero oriented concepts such as
zero tolerance for waste, defects, break down and zero accidents are becoming a pre-requisite in the
manufacturing and assembly industry. In this situation, a revolutionary concept of Total Productive
Maintenance (TPM) has been adopted in many industries across the world to address the above said
problem. TPM is an innovative approach to maintenance that optimizes equipment effectiveness,
eliminates breakdowns and promotes autonomous operator maintenance through day-to-day activities
involving the total workforce. TPM can be considered the science of machinery health. TPM is
productive maintenance carried out by all employees through small group activities. TPM covers three
areas: equipment, people, and the workplace. One of the main aims of TPM is to increase productivity
of plant and equipment in such a way as to achieve maximum productivity with only a modest
investment in maintenance. Therefore by FMEA-TPM helps in improving quality, reliability and
productivity.

Conclusion
Quality and reliability of products and manufacturing processes are critical to the performance of the
final products. They are also important indices for meeting customer satisfaction. In order to fulfill
customer's requirements for quality and reliability, some actions for assuring the quality and reliability
of products or processes should be taken by all the persons involved. One of the most powerful methods
available for measuring the reliability of products or process is FMEA. Probably the greatest criticism
of the FMEA has been its limited use in improving designs. Customers are placing increased demands
on companies for high quality and reliable products. FMEA provides an easy tool to determine which
risk has the greatest concern and therefore an action is needed to prevent a problem before it arises.
The development of these specifications will ensure the product will meet the defined requirements.
Before starting the actual FMEA, a worksheet needs to be created, which contains the important
information about the system, such as the revision date or the names of the components. On this
worksheet all the items or functions of the subject should be listed in a logical manner.
The initial output of an FMEA is the prioritization of failure modes based on their risk priority numbers
and this alone does not eliminate the failure mode. Additional action that might be outside the FMEA
is needed.
Quality and Maintenance of manufacturing systems are closely related functions of any organization.
Over a period of time the concept have emerged which is Total Productive Maintenance (TPM to achieve
World Class Manufacturing system. Total productive maintenance (TPM) is increasingly being seen as
a suitable initiative technique for effectively involving the workforce in manufacturing based
organizations to produce increased productivity and add new impetus to quality efforts. TPM is a useful
tool in helping firm to achieve optimal manufacturing process. By being able to achieve this level of
maintenance, an organization will be able to reap competitive advantages brought by TPM, thus,
producing quality products that manage to satisfy customers and subsequently generating greater
profits. By preventing equipment break-down, improving the quality of the equipment and by
standardizing the equipment (results in less variance, so better quality), the quality of the products
increases
References
 K.G. Johnson & M.K. Khanb, “A study into the use of the process failure mode and effects
analysis (PFMEA) in the automotive industry in the UK”, Journal of Materials Processing
Technology 139 (2003), pp. 348–356.
 K.E. Chong, K.C. Ng, G.G.G. Goh, “Improving Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) Through
Integration of Maintenance Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (Maintenance-FMEA) in a
Semiconductor Manufacturer: A Case Study”
 Anette von Ahsen, “Cost-oriented failure mode and effects analysis”
 Agung Sutrisno, Indra Gunawan, Stenly Tangkuman, “Modified failure mode and effect analysis
(FMEA) model for accessing the risk of maintenance waste.”