Lean FMEA
Can the FMEA process be lean? Based on many experiences with many types of industries, I can say that the vast majority of activity is redundant. Team activity in FMEA should be restricted to only 4 items of discussion only.
- New Content
- Changes to current content
- Past failures
- Increased demand stresses on Carry-over or processes.
The last of these will be my topic of the day. What are increased demand stresses? Demand stresses are based on the noise factors (not audible generally) that are not controlled by the engineer. Noises like Customer usage, Degradation over time, Interfaces with other systems, Environment, and variation sensitivity, are the bases of Robust Engineering. The engineer must attempt to understand these NOISES as they may affect his or her design. The ability of the design (its capacity) to deliver the desired outcomes in the presence of the Demand stress (expected and unexpected) determines how effectively the design satisfies customers. This sounds alittle technical but think of it this way. If an unknown demand on a carryover part is present when the product or process is being used may translate in failure. This means that carryover products and processes which did well in the past may actually fail in the future deployment. Some of my customers indicate that up to 40% of failure comes from what worked in the past but now does not. In order to include these items in future analysis we still need to consider NOISES and their impact on current processes and products.
Currently many companies lean out the FMEA process by creating family FMEA’s. This is not wrong but it can drive the type of behavior that does not consider new or changed NOISES (Increased DEMAND Stress). Currently a cut and paste mentality exists where it does not allow for a efficient review of current designs with respect to new Demands.
In Summary, Lean FMEA is not about cut and paste but instead organization of knowns Causes and Failure Modes, both potential and actual. The additional review of these knowns in relation to new DEMANDS is necessary to assure success.