Using cost based FMEA to enhance reliability and serviceability

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a design tool that mitigates risks during the design phase before they occur. Although many industries use the current FMEA technique, it has many limitations and problems. Risk is measured in terms of Risk Priority Number (RPN) that is a product of occurrence, severity, and detection difficulty. Measuring severity and detection difficulty is very subjective and with no universal scale. RPN is also a product of ordinal variables, which is not meaningful as a proper measure. This paper addresses these shortcomings and introduces a new methodology, Life Cost-Based FMEA, which measures risk in terms of cost. Life Cost-Based FMEA is useful for comparing and selecting design alternatives that can reduce the overall life cycle cost of a particular system. Next, a Monte Carlo simulation is applied to the Cost-Based FMEA to account for the uncertainties in: detection time, fixing time, occurrence, delay time, down time, and model complex scenarios. A case study of a large scale particle accelerator shows the advantages of the proposed approach in predicting life cycle failure cost, measuring risk and planning preventive, scheduled maintenance and ultimately improving up-time. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.