Don,
My 0.02 punts worth.
In answer to your first question about including inspection, I think you're refering to a physical process step here, as in a test station which is part of the manufacturing process. Although, as already pointed out, this will constitute a means of detection for earlier (in the process) failure modes, I think you are trying to capture things that can go wrong with the station itself. In this case I'd say yes you should include it as a process step. As you suggest, a failure mode for an inspection station might be that the gauge becomes unstable- and you would then apply severity occurence and likelyhood of detection to that scenario.
On the other point I'd definitely get as much detail recorded regarding the effect on the customer. For some reason a lot of people try to generalise these effects into bland statements like "defective material to the customer". If this is done, as you say the severity will make some differentiation but when you, or the next person in the job, goes back to the
fmea, they may not understand what the thinking was at the time. Therefore if the effect to the customer is "groove out of position" then write that down on the form. I'd even go further and say "Groove out of position leading to poor fit with associated part, leading to premature wear, noise, and associated warranty claims"
Another thing I've seen a lot (soapbox time)
is Engineers trying to couch everything in technical jargon on fmeas. We'll have our meeting and discuss how this failure results in a split seal and grease running out, but can we write "seal splits and grease runs out" ?
No, someone has to try to think of a more complicated phrase like "Part subject to stress failure resulting in egress of lubrication medium"
My opinion is that on the first day a student sits in your office bored sh**less, you should be able to hand him the fmea book and the process flow charts, and in a few hours he'll have a good idea of how the process goes and what can go wrong.
Cheers Don