FMEA Reviews - At what frequency should FMEA's be reviewed?

At what frequency should FMEA's be reviewed?

IMHO your FMEA and Control Plan should be dynamic documents. They should be reviewed and updated every time you review your process. If you have a CAR, the changes to resolve the CAR should be reflected in the CP and FMEA. If you make process improvements, you should update the CP/FMEA as appropriate.

Dave

I agree with Dave. Every time your process changes (or is changed) the PFMEA should be reviewed - and updated when necessary. I don't think you can/should put a "time stamp" on the review. Just as an example, we manufacture a family of windshield wiper housings (die castings). It is not that uncommon to update the PFMEA and CP three to four times a month - and this with a pretty stable process. We have recently begun our trek into Lean Manufacturing and it becomes quite a task to keep up with all the "improvements".

Andrews said:

At what frequency should FMEA's be reviewed?

Click to expand...

I agree basically with the previous posters.
The real question is

Do you review and update the FMEA when needed

Everyone agrees that FMEA's has to be reviewed whenever any change happens in the process and that no timeframe can be fixed.

Now how will you track the changes such that your FMEA is updated. Have you folks implemented a system to take care of this aspect?

Things to drive FMEA review

Andrews said:

Everyone agrees that FMEA's has to be reviewed whenever any change happens in the process and that no timeframe can be fixed.

Now how will you track the changes such that your FMEA is updated. Have you folks implemented a system to take care of this aspect?

Click to expand...

Andrews

Our system is big on checklists. There are checklists for a lot of things. One item is almost always "review and update the FMEA".

The three main drivers are

All customer complaints - why did we not see the risk?
All new products - review current and add new risks
Internal audit findings - again, why was it not on the FMEA

We have tried to have the process owners review their part of the FMEA - but they are so busy that we got "reviewed and OK"

We have also put light duty people on the "FMEA/CP walking tour". Depending on the person, you can get some excellent results.

We have little success with regular FMEA review meetings...people will do anything to avoid them. I've seen people almost die of boredom in one of these meetings.

You have asked the one question that sums up my working life. How to do you get people to do things? Very challenging.

Caster said:

Andrews

We have little success with regular FMEA review meetings...people will do anything to avoid them. I've seen people almost die of boredom in one of these meetings.

You have asked the one question that sums up my working life. How to do you get people to do things? Very challenging.

Click to expand...

One more reason is that some people are not able to come out of their routine fire fighting and spent time on proactive things like this.Sometimes I myself have avoided meetings due to some other URGENT work that cannot wait.

Mr.Caster,
You talked about some checklists in your post. Would you mind sharing it with us?

Thanks,
Andy

Upates vs. Reviews

We differentiate between ordinatory FMEA updates, where I (as co-ordinator) can just plug information into the document and reviews, where a cross-functional group gets together to discuss a particular process.

Updates are driven by on-going print changes, feedback from reviews, follow-up of recommended actions, etc. Corrective action items are identified in their own meetings (8D) and the recommendations passed on for inclusion in PFMEAs.

Our PFMEA Review meetings are held weekly, allowing us to cover all our processes over the course of the year. Reviews can also be scheduled in response to a specific need. Because each of our PFMEAs relates to a particular process, we can ensure that all meeting participants can add to the discussion. Also, any process changes or quality issues since the last review are summarized at the start of the review. This can give the group focus. Meetings are scheduled to take an hour; new processes may need more than 1 meeting to cover. [Parts are built using on average 8 processes].

Those who supply products to DaimlerChrysler may have seen the PFMEA checklists that the SQAs are now using. Note item 1h)
'FMEA "(Rev.)" date within past 60 days? Note: "N/A" if "(Orig.)" date is within 60 days.'
!

B.G. Wiehle
PFMEA Co-ordinator

If life was an ideal scenario and time was well spent, i.e. not firefighting, what my role seems to soley dedicated too these days in Quality, then FMEA's (well here I refer to process ones) should be reviewed monthly as part of the ongoing management review process. However, life aint ideal and Production Managers can't seem to really see worth in anything other than squeezing another risk laden product from the risk laden process, so the FMEA really remains quite undynamic indeed. I try to persuade all those who remain around long enough to listen that actually a well presented and reviewed FMEA can be used to drive defects down and certainly keep the customer PPM levels just a tad below the million mark. But alas they do not listen and so the line is drawn.

Actually, I have just been recently switched onto the worth of FMEA's, it took me long enough, which is a hard thing to admit, but it really can be the voice of a process and I really believe that it doesn't have to be as complex as a lot think it is (especially those aforementioned Production Manager's). Anyway, they get paid more money than we do so let it roll.

Gabble said:

Actually, I have just been recently switched onto the worth of FMEA's, it took me long enough, which is a hard thing to admit, but it really can be the voice of a process and I really believe that it doesn't have to be as complex as a lot think it is (especially those aforementioned Production Manager's). Anyway, they get paid more money than we do so let it roll.

Click to expand...

It's important to remember that FMEA is a process, not a document. The document is a record of the process. A company may or may not use the AIAG/SAE model of FMEA documentation. I personally think it has some significant flaws, but never mind that for now. In a generic sense, FMEA involves considering ways (as many as possible) in which processes might fail and then doing things to prevent those failures and doing things to protect the customer in the event preventive actions aren't possible or don't work as planned.

FMEA review is a function of what should be the normal management review process, the purpose of which is to verify the functioning of the quality system.