What does "Failure Mode Effects Analysis" (FMEA) help to evaluate?

Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a systematic method used to identify and evaluate potential failures in a product or process and their consequences. The primary focus of FMEA is to analyze the ways in which components or processes might fail and to assess the effects of these failures on system performance, safety, and operations.

By understanding the potential failure modes, FMEA allows organizations to prioritize issues based on their severity, occurrence, and detectability. This proactive approach helps in determining which failures could have the most significant impact on operations and enables the implementation of measures to mitigate or eliminate those risks. This is crucial in process safety management, as it directly relates to maintaining safe and effective operations.

While compliance with safety standards, employee awareness of safety procedures, and training effectiveness are all important aspects of safety management, they are not the primary focus of FMEA. Instead, FMEA is centered around the analysis of potential failures and their impacts, making it a vital tool in risk management and safety engineering.