Adapting failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) to select hazard mitigation measures

Abstract

FMEA is a common analytical tool used in product development, manufacturing and operations management to understand potential failure modes inclusive of the severity and likelihood of those failures. FMEA helps a practitioner identify potential failure modes based on past experience and analysis. Once potential failures are understood, design changes or practices can be put in place to optimally deal with the expected failure mode. An incident that causes injury or loss of production within any production facility can be considered a failure within that system. Current standards and engineering practices exist to identify and even quantify hazard to some extent. This paper describes an adaptation of FMEA methodology to rank multiple hazard mitigation solutions versus the effect they have on the various hazardous tasks that those solutions address. The intent is to provide an objective analytical tool to rank potential investments, or actions with respect to derived benefit in terms of overall facility hazard reduction.