what is fmea

FMEA stands for Failure Mode and Effects Analysis. It is a systematic and proactive method for evaluating a process to identify where and how it might fail and to assess the relative impact of different failures, in order to identify the parts of the process that are most in need of change. FMEA is a step-by-step approach for identifying all possible failures in a design, process, or system, and their causes and effects. It was developed by reliability engineers in the late 1950s to study problems that might arise from malfunctions of military systems. FMEA is an inductive reasoning (forward logic) single point of failure analysis and is a core task in reliability engineering, safety engineering, and quality engineering. There are different types of FMEA analyses, such as functional, design, and process. FMEA is effective in evaluating both new and existing processes and systems. Business analysts typically use FMEA templates to assist them in the completion of analyses.