Failure modes and effects analysis through knowledge modelling

Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) is a widely used quality improvement and risk assessment tool in manufacturing. Design and process failures recorded through FMEA provides valuable knowledge for future product and process design. However, the way the knowledge is captured poses considerable difficulties for reuse. This research aims to contribute to the reuse of FMEA knowledge through a knowledge modelling approach. FMEA activities are shifted to the conceptual design stage to avoid costly and difficult design changes at later stages of the design process. An object-oriented approach has been used to create an FMEA model. Functional diagrams have been used for the conceptual model. The FMEA model uses functional reasoning techniques to enable automatic FMEA generation from historical data. The reasoning technique also provides a means for the creation of new knowledge. The automatic generation replaces the traditional brainstorming process for FMEA report creation. The sources of the historical data can be from the previous FMEA, failure reports or from the individual designers.