FMEA in design for service

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is discussed as a tool to share diagnostic knowledge between Engineering and Field Service, as a possible means of implementing Design for Service. Designers are assisted in developing diagnostic service tools alongside the design early in the design process rather than this being a post-production activity. Additional benefits are gained from improved accuracy of the FMEA and the maintenance of up-to-date product knowledge. An object-oriented FMEA model has been expanded to generate the FMEA elements and diagnostic FMEA. The use of an object-oriented FMEA environment and FMEA object libraries promotes the reuse of existing information and has increased data availability for the diagnostic tool development. The Diagnostic Service Tool (DST) is an extended application from the automated FMEA generation. Existing failure mode data is used to determine further characteristics of part failures. As a result, a prototype tool in the form of diagnostic software was created and evaluated in a field service application using four automatic transmission problem cases. The results showed that there was significant difference in repair times between the conventional repair manuals and DST. The research has demonstrated that the prototype software is successful in providing effective field service centered tools and in turn a method of providing feedback to the designer. This knowledge sharing between Engineering and Field Service provides a significant improvement in product development.