Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) in maintenance and diagnostics

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a tool that has long been used at various stages of the product life cycle but is most commonly used in the engineering design and manufacturing planning stages. Some work has been done on conceptual design stages but very little, if any, research has been conducted to understand how FMEA might be used during the service of the product. Furthermore, the feedback of performance knowledge (in the form of FMEA data) from the in-service product use to conceptual and engineering design is a potentially valuable but un-exploited activity. This can be seen as a possible method of implementing Design for Service. Diagnostic service tools (manuals, computer diagnostics, etc) are usually created as a post-production activity, but reuse of FMEA knowledge generated during design could be used in a concurrent activity. Additional benefits are gained from improved accuracy of the FMEA and the maintenance of up-to-date product knowledge. A system for computerised interactive FMEA generation from FMEA elements has been created from the research. An object-oriented FMEA model has been adopted and 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 parts failure. As a result, a tool in the form of diagnostic software is created which is practical for real life use. The prototype software was 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 to the Field Service and in turn a method of providing feedback to the Designer. Hence, knowledge sharing between Engineering and Field Service can be carried out continuously to provide a significant improvement in product development.