failure-modes-and-effects-analysis

Failure-modes-and-effects-analysis (FMEA) is a structured, inductive method for systematically enumerating every way a product, process, or system can fail, tracing each failure mode to its root causes, and scoring the consequences by severity, occurrence likelihood, and detectability — typically via a Risk Priority Number (RPN = severity × occurrence × detection) to prioritize corrective actions. Its parameters are: (1) the failure mode — how something fails; (2) the effects — what goes wrong when it fails; (3) the causes — what triggers the failure; (4) the RPN scores that rank urgency; and (5) the prescribed controls that mitigate or eliminate the risk. It persists through documented FMEA sheets embedded in engineering workflows and quality management systems (ISO 9001, IATF 16949), where each analysis is a living record updated as designs evolve and field failures are discovered. [formal: fatalis modorum effectusque analyses | substrate: behavior | horizon: a life | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]