I am composing a presentation on process
FMEA (Design is a little more challenging and I have not worked in that field), and the new manual actually makes sense. The concepts are pretty much the same but it stresses that you start with the failure mode as the focus element, and go from there to the failure effect (consequence) and the failure cause (why the failure mode happens, formerly known as the mechanism). One improvement is that the Occurrence rating is based on the process step's prevention controls as opposed to an estimate of the probability of failure, which is often hard to obtain unless you have an established process with a known process performance index. And Ppk doesn't account for assignable causes that result in nonconformances.
They also use an action priority matrix which is better than the risk priority number (the product of three ordinal numbers). And they also look at three classes of failures: (1) poor quality, the traditional one, (2) failures that affect continuity of operations and (3) failures with occupational health and safety issues. I am actually starting to like it.
One drawback (my opinion) is that the work elements considered are normally only four of the six traditional categories of a cause and effect diagram, with Method and Measurement omitted. I found an example in which the Method (drill speed and feed rate) might in fact be instrumental in preventing the failure in question, namely broken drill bits (which result in undrilled parts which can be detected before they leave the workstation). I am working off a Shigeo Shingo case study in error-proofing.
Another is that it is possible to get a Low action priority for a 9-10 severity failure and occurrence and detection ratings greater than 1 (1=the failure cause cannot cause the failure mode, period, for the Occurrence rating), which should not be possible, but that is just my opinion.
In any event, I really like the manual and it is definitely an improvement on how things were done 20 years ago.