Podcast: FMEA 101: Conducting Failure Modes and Effects Analyses

PS: When teams conduct an FMEA, when they use this tool, what is the eventual output of the tool? Are they looking for a specific number or is there a specific set of recommended actions? What should people expect to get once they conduct this exercise?

BH: Yeah, I know it's funny because we do so many things as reliability engineers, and somebody said we have to do this, and we do it, and then we put it on the shelf and we get absolutely no value out of it. So remember, everything that we do has to be taken to the next step. Eventually it has to be turned into value for the business, and the value for the business comes when people put their hands on the equipment and do something to it, right?

I hate to break this to everybody out there who has arrived at their executive position, their management position, their supervisor position. None of us have any value unless the operator and the mechanic put their hands on the machines, so the output of this is a strategy that can be turned into your maintenance plan in your CMMS, so that they can touch the machine.

PS: So it's more than a diagnostic tool, but there's more work to be done once you do complete it.

BH: Right.

PS: What would trigger an FMEA? Is it a machine that's constantly breaking down in a certain way? Is it something that you would do after you perform a criticality analysis?

BH: Oh, perfect, we're going to have so many light bulb moments today. I'm going to tell you right now we're going to so many moments. So let’s back up just a minute. The value of a reliability engineer again, it's when hands are put on the equipment. So what do we start with? We start with building a hierarchy. Why? So we can do criticality. Why? So we can build an asset strategy which includes FMEAs and you know PM optimization and part problem cause, all those things. Why? So we can build an equipment maintenance plan. Why? So it can be handed off to your planners to input into the CMMS so that the technicians can touch the machines in the right way at the right time.

There’s a string of things that have to happen, but you said something: when do we use it? Is it when something breaks down a lot or not? Or is it some other sort of analysis? Let's go back to the criticality tool and I'm going to tie together the criticality, the failure modes and effects analysis and your root cause analysis tool. What are the categories that are important to your business? What are they? What would they be?