Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a structured, incremental methodology for enumerating every plausible way a system, subsystem, or component can fail, assessing the consequences of each failure mode on system-level function, and ranking them by severity, occurrence frequency, and detectability so that engineering resources target the highest-risk failures first. Parameters: the unit of analysis (component, process, or design), the failure catalogue built from design specifications and operational history, and the Risk Priority Number (RPN) computed as severity × occurrence × detectability. Persistence mechanism: codified in standards (e.g., IECEE 60812, AIAG-VDA FMEA), maintained as living worksheets and databases that are updated whenever failures are observed or design changes occur, and enforced through mandatory review gates in product-development workflows. [formal: fmea | substrate: behavior | horizon: hours | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
fmea
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a structured, incremental methodology for enumerating every plausible way a system, subsystem, or component can fail, assessing the consequences of each failure mode on system-level function, and…
Definition
Why it is in scope
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis — a systematic, step-by-step methodology for identifying potential failure modes in a system or component, analyzing their effects, and prioritizing them by severity, occurrence, and detectability. Human-made: a structured engineering discipline with formal protocols, standardized worksheets, and codified scoring systems developed in aerospace and automotive industries.
Names and aliases
- fmeaen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cms8fls9600pv73fklpt543o4INSTANCE_OF →
FMEA is a specific structured cause-analysis method. It uses systematic failure-mode identification to trace causes — it is a kind of cause analysis procedure, not merely something that uses it or depends on it. Pin sense: cause-analysis as the broad category of methods that trace consequences back to their root causes.
- cms81mqtv00jeh6s8s7t3j6hyINSTANCE_OF →
FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) is a specific analytical method for identifying potential failure modes and their effects — it is a kind of risk assessment, specifically a structured, bottom-up technique.
Relations to this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 31, 2026, 6:19 AM UTC
- Content hash
- 3111d098384c8791c59e4c3f129b6676de8ad653fec47b9effdedb24286962ad