The goal of performing a failure modes, effects, and diagnostics analysis (FMEDA) is to predict important reliability and safety metrics including failure rates for each failure mode, automatic diagnostic effectiveness, useful life, latent fault test effectiveness. This information is used for many purposes including identification of weak areas in a design, warranty cost prediction, etc. But perhaps most importantly, FMEDA results are used to calculate the safety integrity of equipment designed for Functional Safety applications. These safety integrity metrics are an essential part of functional safety certification.
As valuable as the FMEDA results are, many find that the engineering time needed to perform a quality FMEDA is excessive. How can we do better? There are several techniques that are used by top FMEDA professionals to not only reduce engineering hours but increase analysis quality. One of the most effective techniques is to organize the FMEDA input information into functional blocks, with functions and failure modes for each block documented. exida calls this the Functional Failure Mode FMEDA process.
Rudolf P. Chalupa has over 40 years of experience in electronic design, software development, and reliability analysis. He has a B.S., in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University and is a Certified Functional Safety Expert (CFSE).