• Products
    • Our Products
    • Relyence FMEA
    • Relyence FRACAS
    • Relyence Fault Tree
    • Relyence Reliability Prediction
    • Relyence RBD
    • Relyence Maintainability Prediction
    • Relyence Weibull
    • Relyence ALT
    • Relyence Studio
  • Industries
    • Industries Overview
    • Aerospace
    • Automotive
    • Commercial
    • Consumer Products
    • Defense
    • Healthcare
    • Medical
    • Oil & Gas
    • Telecom
  • Services
    • Our Services
    • Training
    • Implementation
    • Technical Support
    • Resources
  • Blog
  • About Us
    • Our Team
    • Join Us
    • Why Relyence
    • Contact Us
  • Sign In

Call us today! 724.832.1900

info@relyence.com
RelyenceRelyence
  • Products
    • Our Products
    • Relyence FMEA
    • Relyence FRACAS
    • Relyence Fault Tree
    • Relyence Reliability Prediction
    • Relyence RBD
    • Relyence Maintainability Prediction
    • Relyence Weibull
    • Relyence ALT
    • Relyence Studio
  • Industries
    • Industries Overview
    • Aerospace
    • Automotive
    • Commercial
    • Consumer Products
    • Defense
    • Healthcare
    • Medical
    • Oil & Gas
    • Telecom
  • Services
    • Our Services
    • Training
    • Implementation
    • Technical Support
    • Resources
  • Blog
  • About Us
    • Our Team
    • Join Us
    • Why Relyence
    • Contact Us
  • Sign In

How to Assess Risk Using FMEA

Home » How to Assess Risk Using FMEA
Risk Assessment

How to Assess Risk Using FMEA

October 26, 2020 FMEA, Quality, Reliability

This article is an excerpt from our “How to Assess Risk Using FMEA” white paper.

FMEA, or Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, is a widely adopted approach for failure analysis and risk assessment. Originating in the 1940s for use in the U.S. military, FMEA is now one of the most commonly used techniques in engineering for failure analysis of products and processes. FMEA is an organized, step-by-step process for comprehensively evaluating a system or process to identify potential failure modes and eliminate or mitigate those deemed most critical.

The FMEA process begins by identifying all possible failure modes of a product or process. The second step is to determine the possible causes and resulting effects of those potential failures. You then assess the risk level associated with each of the failure modes based on a set of established criteria. Finally, you find ways to detect, mitigate, or prevent failures in order to bring your product or process into alignment with your overall quality and risk goals.

Our New to FMEA article is a helpful introductory overview of FMEA concepts.

FMEA Risk Assessment Strategy

While each step of the FMEA process is crucial for a successful analysis, the risk assessment element is key to zeroing in on the most risk sensitive areas that must be addressed in order to meet your quality and safety objectives. The risk assessment strategy you employ is vital in determining your action plan for product or process improvement. Essentially, ineffective risk assessment leads to an ineffective approach to risk reduction.

By utilizing a sound risk assessment strategy, you can easily determine the key areas to focus on for improvement. This ensures your team’s efforts will be focused on those failures that are most critical. By targeting the key areas of concern for risk mitigation tasks, you can be confident you will meet your overall reliability and safety objectives.

There are various ways to assess the risk of the failures identified during the FMEA process. Three of the most commonly used approaches for risk assessment are:

  1. RPN, or Risk Priority Number, defined in standards such as AIAG and SAE J1739
  2. AP, or Action Priority, as defined in the FMEA Handbook from AIAG & VDA
  3. Criticality as defined in MIL-STD-1629

To best suit their needs, organizations will choose to use one of the methods as defined in the handbooks, modify one of the methods, or create their own unique risk assessment method. By understanding the principles behind these assessment methodologies, you can decide which is the best approach for your organization.

Risk Assessment Factors

Three factors are often used to analyze the risk of the potential failures and resulting effects identified during FMEA:

  • Severity: Denotes the seriousness of the problem if it happens, with a focus on the consequences. The higher the number, the greater the severity.
  • Occurrence: Denotes how likely the issue is to occur. To determine the rate of occurrence, you’ll want to look at all the potential causes of a failure and the chance that those causes will occur. The higher the number, the greater the probability of occurrence.
  • Detection: Denotes how easy or difficult it is to identify the problem. A higher rating means an issue is less likely to be detected either by engineers during the test phases of product development or by customers after product release. Therefore, the higher the number, the less likely the failure is detected.
Risk Assessment Factors Graphic

Commonly used risk assessment factors: Severity, Occurrence, and Detection

There are Severity, Occurrence, and Detection scales provided in FMEA standards. However, organizations often customize the scales to better suit their needs.

For an in-depth look at the most commonly used risk assessment methodologies and examples of how they are used, download the white paper.

Learn More about FMEA Risk Assessment Methods

“How to Assess Risk Using FMEA” covers the following topics:

  1. FMEA: Failure Mode & Effect Analysis
  2. FMEA Risk Assessment Strategy
  3. Using RPN for Risk Assessment
    1. Example Using RPN
    2. Using the Risk Matrix
  4. Using AP for Risk Assessment
    1. Example Using AP
  5. Using Criticality for Risk Assessment
    1. Using the Criticality Matrix
    2. Example Using Criticality
  6. Using a Custom Risk Assessment Strategy
  7. Reassessing Risk After Recommended Actions Are Implemented
    1. Example Revised Risk Analysis
  8. Conclusion

Download the full white paper here. If you are interested in learning more about Relyence software, contact us or start your free trial today!

Tags: AIAGAIAG & VDAAPcriticalityCriticality MatrixDetectionFailure Effect ProbabilityFMEA HandbookItem CriticalityMIL-STD-1629Mode CriticalityOccurrenceRisk MatrixRPNSeverity
Share

You also might be interested in

Cost-Effective, Customizable FMEA

Relyence FMEA: Cost-Effective Customizable FMEA Software

Sep 6, 2022

FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) is one of the[...]

FMEA word in Red with Gears in background

Using FMEA Software as a Guided Approach to Performing Failure Analysis

Jan 18, 2021

Introduction FMEA, or Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, is a[...]

Photo of software tool integration

How Your Reliability Tools Can Work Together to Achieve Maximum Results

Sep 29, 2020

Reliability engineering, and the related field of quality engineering, both[...]

Search

Recent Posts

  • An Overview of FRACAS Methodologies
  • Implementing FRACAS: Build or Buy?
  • FTA vs. RBD: Which System Modeling Tool is Right for Me?
  • Relyence FMEA: Cost-Effective Customizable FMEA Software
  • The Relyence Dashboard

Categories

  • 217Plus
  • ALT
  • ANSI/VITA 51.1
  • CAPA
  • China's GJB/z 299
  • Dashboard
  • Fault Tree
  • FMEA
  • FRACAS
  • Fundamentals
  • General
  • How-to
  • Knowledge Bank
  • Life Data Analysis
  • Maintainability Prediction
  • MIL-HDBK-217
  • MTBF
  • News
  • NPRD/EPRD
  • NSWC Mechanical
  • Quality
  • RBD
  • Reliability
  • Reliability Block Diagram
  • Reliability Prediction
  • Reliability Studio
  • Telcordia
  • Weibull

Tags

8D AIAG AIAG & VDA always-in-sync AP Availability China's GJB/z 299 continuous improvement Control Plan COPQ CP dashboard DFMEA EPRD fault tree fmea FMECA fracas FTA GJB/z 299 Intelligent Part Mapping ISO-9001 Knowledge Bank MIL-HDBK-217 MIL-STD-1629 MTBF MTTF MTTR NPRD PCP PFD PFMEA Process Flow Diagram QMS RBD Redundancy Reliability Reliability Block Diagram reliability prediction RPN standby Telcordia Weibull What-If? Workflow

Connect with us

Start your free trial today! Try for Free!
Relyence Corporation logo

At Relyence, we have a passion for always improving. We believe in always creating, always innovating, and always being the best. We believe that in the software world, and in the technology space, we must always be moving ahead. We need to keep pace with all the new technological innovations, as well as new methodologies in industries. We continually work on product development, new capabilities, feature enhancement, and ever improving our tools.

AIAG Member Logo

FIND US HERE

  • Relyence Corporation
  • 540 Pellis Road, Greensburg, PA 15601
  • 724.832.1900
  • wecare@relyence.com
  • https://relyence.com

Privacy Policy

Terms of Service

Sitemap

FRESH FROM OUR BLOG

  • An Overview of FRACAS Methodologies
  • Implementing FRACAS: Build or Buy?
  • FTA vs. RBD: Which System Modeling Tool is Right for Me?

© 2023 Relyence Corporation All Rights Reserved. Relyence® is a registered trademark of Relyence Corporation.

  • Try for Free!
Prev Next
This site uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. By continuing to navigate through this site or by clicking Approve, you consent to their usage. Click Privacy Policy for further details.ApprovePrivacy Policy