FMEA - A Team-Based Decision-Making Approach to Quality Management

Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) is a powerful proactive technique developed to prevent product and process failures. FMEA (also known as the fish-bone or the Ishikawa technique after its originator) was first used by Japanese automobile manufacturers to plan their production systems on the shop floor (Pfeifer, et alt 1994). It is now gaining acceptance in other areas like logistics, quality control and even personnel management. FMEA in its traditional form. The author is presently a member of faculty at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore is largely dependent on managerial judgment and uses minimal mathematics or computer time. Despite simplicity it is an elegant technique for ensuring process performance, likemany other management techniques originating from Japan, FMEA requires team-based thinking and a mutual belief in collective responsibility. The success of this method therefore rests largely upon the behavioural-motivational aspects of the people involved in the process. In this paper, I propose to provide an overview of FMEA as a management tool and at the same time suggest improvements for better effectiveness.