DFMEA or Design Failure Modes Effects Analysis is a Risk Management Tool which is widely used throughout the Automotive Industry.
DFMEA is a Team activity which is led by the Project Manager or Senior Design Engineer.
It involves using a set form & identifying the risks in the project.
Each Risk is called a Failure Mode. Each has an Effect. The Severity of this Effect is assigned a score where 10 is high impact & 1 low impact.
Each Failure Mode also has a Cause which is ranked according to its Occurrence or likelihood between 1 & 10.
Each Failure Mode also has a Current Control and its chance of detection is ranked 10 unlikely to 1 likely.
The product of Severity x Cause x Control gives us a Risk Priority Number or RPN which gives us a measure of the size of the problem and the urgency to address it.
Identifying a Recommended Action for each Failure Mode leads us to rescoring the Occurrence & Detection and subsequently reducing the RPN.
The key to success of DFMEA is not to get too hung up about the scores and to use it as intended, as a comparative tool for Risk Analysis.
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chris@projectsguru.co.uk
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