A commercial developer of precision special-purpose test equipment asked us for guidance and review of their newly developed Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) program for one of their automated test systems. In this case reliability was important to lessen lost time/revenue impact. If the test equipment failed during the week-long test sequence, the test had to start from the beginning – severely hurting the customer’s production schedule and threatening the reputation of the test equipment manufacturer. The analysis was a unique challenge because the FMEA focused on the software that controlled the test equipment, rather than on the test equipment hardware which was largely commercial off-the-shelf (COTS).
We have found that this approach works well for every kind of FMEA and we continually pursue process improvements. We are confident that if you have a product which is in production or has a long lifespan, an FMEA can ultimately save lifecycle cost and increase customer satisfaction through reduction of defects and the delays they cause. Explore HBM Prenscia Engineering Services and Solutions for more information and technical papers on this, and many other related topics.