Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

  • Home
  • About
    • Contributors
    • About Us
    • Colophon
    • Survey
  • Reliability.fm
  • Articles
    • CRE Preparation Notes
    • NoMTBF
    • on Leadership & Career
      • Advanced Engineering Culture
      • ASQR&R
      • Engineering Leadership
      • Managing in the 2000s
      • Product Development and Process Improvement
    • on Maintenance Reliability
      • Aasan Asset Management
      • AI & Predictive Maintenance
      • Asset Management in the Mining Industry
      • CMMS and Maintenance Management
      • CMMS and Reliability
      • Conscious Asset
      • EAM & CMMS
      • Everyday RCM
      • History of Maintenance Management
      • Life Cycle Asset Management
      • Maintenance and Reliability
      • Maintenance Management
      • Plant Maintenance
      • Process Plant Reliability Engineering
      • RCM Blitz®
      • ReliabilityXperience
      • Rob’s Reliability Project
      • The Intelligent Transformer Blog
      • The People Side of Maintenance
      • The Reliability Mindset
    • on Product Reliability
      • Accelerated Reliability
      • Achieving the Benefits of Reliability
      • Apex Ridge
      • Field Reliability Data Analysis
      • Metals Engineering and Product Reliability
      • Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics
      • Product Validation
      • Reliability by Design
      • Reliability Competence
      • Reliability Engineering Insights
      • Reliability in Emerging Technology
      • Reliability Knowledge
    • on Risk & Safety
      • CERM® Risk Insights
      • Equipment Risk and Reliability in Downhole Applications
      • Operational Risk Process Safety
    • on Systems Thinking
      • Communicating with FINESSE
      • The RCA
    • on Tools & Techniques
      • Big Data & Analytics
      • Experimental Design for NPD
      • Innovative Thinking in Reliability and Durability
      • Inside and Beyond HALT
      • Inside FMEA
      • Institute of Quality & Reliability
      • Integral Concepts
      • Learning from Failures
      • Progress in Field Reliability?
      • R for Engineering
      • Reliability Engineering Using Python
      • Reliability Reflections
      • Statistical Methods for Failure-Time Data
      • Testing 1 2 3
      • The Manufacturing Academy
  • eBooks
  • Resources
    • Accendo Authors
    • FMEA Resources
    • Glossary
    • Feed Forward Publications
    • Openings
    • Books
    • Webinar Sources
    • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • Your Courses
    • Live Courses
      • Introduction to Reliability Engineering & Accelerated Testings Course Landing Page
      • Advanced Accelerated Testing Course Landing Page
    • Integral Concepts Courses
      • Reliability Analysis Methods Course Landing Page
      • Applied Reliability Analysis Course Landing Page
      • Statistics, Hypothesis Testing, & Regression Modeling Course Landing Page
      • Measurement System Assessment Course Landing Page
      • SPC & Process Capability Course Landing Page
      • Design of Experiments Course Landing Page
    • The Manufacturing Academy Courses
      • An Introduction to Reliability Engineering
      • Reliability Engineering Statistics
      • An Introduction to Quality Engineering
      • Quality Engineering Statistics
      • FMEA in Practice
      • Process Capability Analysis course
      • Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process course
      • Return on Investment online course
    • Industrial Metallurgist Courses
    • FMEA courses Powered by The Luminous Group
    • Foundations of RCM online course
    • Reliability Engineering for Heavy Industry
    • How to be an Online Student
    • Quondam Courses
  • Calendar
    • Call for Papers Listing
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Calendar
  • Login
    • Member Home
  • Barringer Process Reliability Introduction Course Landing Page
  • Upcoming Live Events
You are here: Home / Articles / Quality Objective 1: FMEA PLAN

by Carl S. Carlson Leave a Comment

Quality Objective 1: FMEA PLAN

Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning   Thomas Edison

As summarized in the first article in this series, “New Series – The Quality of FMEAs,” each month, I will write an article focusing on one of the 14 FMEA Quality Objectives. The intent is to provide insights and application tips for evaluating how well an FMEA meets the quality objectives. By learning to apply FMEA quality objectives, you can help to ensure that product designs and manufacturing processes are safe and reliable. If you didn’t read the introductory article, now is a good time to read it, since it explains FMEA Quality Objectives, and how they are used to create high-quality FMEAs.

In this article, I will outline how to evaluate an FMEA Plan against the FMEA Quality Objective for FMEA Plans.

What is an FMEA Plan?

The definition of “plan” is “a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something.” An FMEA plan is a detailed proposal for the set of FMEAs that will be done in support of a project, including FMEA types, when each will be done, and by whom.

Why is an FMEA Plan needed?

There are two primary reasons an FMEA Plan is needed. The first reason is few companies or organizations have the resources to do FMEAs on everything. FMEAs take time and cost money. Once the set of FMEAs are determined, they are listed in the FMEA Plan. The second reason is any plan of action needs good organization to be executed. This includes who will lead the FMEA, when it needs to be started and when it needs to be completed, and other resource information to enable efficient implementation.

What is the Quality Objective for FMEA Plan?

The FMEA Plan quality objective is:

The right set of FMEAs have been identified and prioritized, based on company policy, and organized into an executable FMEA plan.

The end result (deliverable) of an FMEA Plan is a listing of the agreed-upon FMEAs that need to be done for a given project, prioritized in sequence, including the necessary organizing information.

How do you assess how well an FMEA project meets the quality objective?

Each FMEA Quality Objective can be assessed for how well it is in place, and can be rated on a 1 to 3 or 1 to 5 scale. It is up to your company or organization what scale to use. Review the FMEA Plan and assess how well it meets the objective described above. See if it makes sense and can be readily implemented.

Consider these questions:

  • Does the FMEA Plan include the set of FMEAs that need to be done, based on preliminary risk assessment? See article Preliminary Risk Assessment
  • Does the FMEA Plan have all the necessary elements of good planning, such as who will lead the team, start and completion dates, and other planning resources?
  • Does the FMEA Plan include reference to the Ground Rules and Assumptions and Operating Environment? See article Establishing FMEA Ground Rules and Assumptions
  • Does the FMEA Plan reference relevant company FMEA procedures and standards?
  • Does the FMEA Plan integrate into company project execution system, so it can be easily tracked and implemented?

What is an example of FMEA Plan?

Below is an example of an FMEA Plan that is evaluated for Quality Objective # 1: FMEA Plan.

FMEAPlanexample

Tips

The Preliminary Risk Assessment prioritizes and selects the most important FMEAs. This is key input to the FMEA Plan. When reviewing the FMEA Plan, always ask for the Preliminary Risk Assessment to see how it impacted the FMEA Plan.

Summary

All FMEA projects should develop a well-written FMEA Plan. By following the advices in this article, you can evaluate how well the FMEA Plan meets quality objectives.

[display_form id=415]

Filed Under: Articles, Inside FMEA Tagged With: FMEA Quality Objectives

About Carl S. Carlson

Carl S. Carlson is a consultant and instructor in the areas of FMEA, reliability program planning and other reliability engineering disciplines, supporting over one hundred clients from a wide cross-section of industries. He has 35 years of experience in reliability testing, engineering, and management positions, including senior consultant with ReliaSoft Corporation, and senior manager for the Advanced Reliability Group at General Motors.

« What is GR&R (video)
How RCM Transforms Your Reliability Culture »

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Articles by Carl Carlson
in the Inside FMEA series

[popup type="" link_text="Logo Info" ]

Information about FMEA Icon

Inside FMEA can be visually represented by a large tree, with roots, a solid trunk, branches, and leaves.

- The roots of the tree represent the philosophy and guiding principles for effective FMEAs.
- The solid trunk of the tree represents the fundamentals for all FMEAs.
- The branches represent the various FMEA applications.
- The leaves represent the valuable outcomes of FMEAs.
- This is intended to convey that each of the various FMEA applications have the same fundamentals and philosophical roots.

 

For example, the roots of the tree can represent following philosophy and guiding principles for effective FMEAs, such as:

1. Correct procedure         2. Lessons learned
3. Trained team                 4. Focus on prevention
5. Integrated with DFR    6. Skilled facilitation
7. Management support

The tree trunk represents the fundamentals of FMEA. All types of FMEA share common fundamentals, and these are essential to successful FMEA applications.

The tree branches can include the different types of FMEAs, including:

1. System FMEA         2. Design FMEA
3. Process FMEA        4. DRBFM
5. Hazard Analysis     6. RCM or Maintenance FMEA
7. Software FMEA      8. Other types of FMEA

The leaves of the tree branches represent individual FMEA projects, with a wide variety of FMEA scopes and results. [/popup]

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about articles and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Recent Posts

  • Leadership Values in Maintenance and Operations
  • Today’s Gremlin – It’ll never work here
  • How a Mission Statement Drives Behavioral Change in Organizations
  • Gremlins today
  • The Power of Vision in Leadership and Organizational Success

© 2025 FMS Reliability · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Cookies Policy