Design FMEA

Design FMEA is performed to recognize and address areas of potential risk in the component or system design. The objective is to review the product design & to establish the following:

• What are the major functional elements of the design?
• Which are the potential failures?
• What are the effects of the failure?
• Which are the major causes of failure?
• Which are the controls utilized to prevent failure?

From this analysis, an assessment of the failure potential of the design is made and it is expressed as the Risk Priority Number (RPN). The reliability of the component or the sub-system is utilized to calculate the occurrence value. The higher value of the RPN (typically greater than 90), mentions the need for design corrective action to prevent the likelihood of reliability problems. So the design FMEA might recommend changes to be built to a product design so as to reduce risk of failure in the field or of the manufacturing process.