Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)

FMEA is the systematic walkthrough of every potential failure mode in a design, process, or system, scoring each by severity, occurrence, and detection to produce a Risk Priority Number. Aerospace runs three flavors: Design FMEA (Engineering), Process FMEA (Manufacturing), and Functional Hazard Assessment (Safety, for certification). A real DFMEA on a complex assembly has 200 to 800 line items. The discipline is in keeping it living. An FMEA you wrote two years ago and never updated is worse than none, because it gives a false sense of having done the work. Roles where this matters: Quality, Reliability, Safety, Systems Engineering.