China says yes to FMEA
Working in China this week. The FMEA process is just starting to take off in China. The concept of FMEA is always somewhat hard to start with. The design engineers here still struggle with the same issues that design communities everywhere else struggle with. Why do this? I am a good design engineer. I won’t make mistakes.
The message here is the same everywhere: The design engineer should never do their own Design FMEA. Think about it. What will they find? And if they find something, why did they not find it before the FMEA? The design engineer should be doing the FMEA in his or her head as the design process progresses. The Design FMEA is done by a team of people including other design personnel that provide the questions and drive for doing a good job. The design engineer responsible for the design is required for two reasons:
1) They are in the best position to know when the FMEA should be performed: roughly 50% of design completion time or earlier.
2) They need to provide the team with the philosophy of the design direction and choices made.
They must never drive the FMEA as the result will follow the the design engineers lead, and that would diminish the value of FMEA for uncovering possible failure modes, their causes and mechanisms and the actions that will be suggested to make the design better.
Your comments are always welcome!