Standardizing the FMECA format: a guideline for Air Force contractors

Each reliability requirement extracted from a military standard (MIL-STD-1543, MIL-STD-785, MIL-STD-1629, etc.) must now be justified before a program office can approve its inclusion in a statement of work (SOW). Justification can be based on the criticality of high reliability to achieving program objectives or the lack of substitute commercial standards. With or without standards, the purpose of the reliability program is to assure that reliability engineering is a major contributor to the contractor's systems engineering process. In the case of failure mode and effects criticality analysis (FMECA), an ancillary purpose is to provide proof to the customer (the Air Force in the case of most US Space and launch vehicles) that reliability engineering was in fact included in the systems engineering process. This paper describes guidelines for building a comprehensive reliability engineering database using the failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis record (FMECAR) format.