Failure Modes & Effective Analysis And Continuous Improvement

Failure Modes & Effective Analysis (FMEA) is a design tool which has been used to improve the quality of product and process design, leverage production experience into other areas and achieve continuous improvement for product already in manufacture. FMEA will be briefly described and characterized in order to provide a common frame of reference for discussion. Key practices which support FMEA include the formation of cross- functional teams, empowerment, and project planning. The archival power of FMEA will be closely reviewed as a productivity multiplier. It will show how FMEA can be used to broadly track program improvements and place them in a customer sensitive context. In addition, examples derived from actual semiconductor applications will be presented and discussed in order to gain better insight into the link between FMEA and continuous improvement. Another point of emphasis will be the common difficulties encountered while implementing this engineering tool. A common theme in successful enterprises is the drive for continuous improvement. Whatever is "best-in-class'' today is being copied by less formidable competitors while one's main rivals are already leaping to the next generation of technology. The successful enterprise is always looking for the new, the better, the quicker, the less costly ways of getting the job done. Today's semiconductor industry is a prima facie example of the "survival of the fittest" principle at work. Failure Modes & Effect Analysis (FMEA) is a tool which is gaining recognition in electronics manufacturing. It is an advanced quality planning methodology and a form of structured brainstorming which allows problems to be dissected and broken down into a series of smaller, more manageable bites. Customer communication is a key element of the FMEA process, thus assuring customer requirements define the acceptable level of performance. There are distinctions within FMEA. The Design FMEA examines the design intent of a product or service. The Process FMEA seeks out possible sources of variation in manufacture of the predetermined design. The Design FMEA starts with a "clean sheet" of paper and known manufacturing capabilities, so that the end product exactly matches the customer requirements. The Process FMEA looks for things which might go wrong or vary within the manufacturing process and identifies corrective and/or containment actions for each potential condition. As a result of the design and process FMEA, a product has been scrutinized to achieve a more robust design manufactured with a completely characterized process. (1)