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Severity Rankings in FMEA (clarity or examples)

Discussion in 'FMEA - Failure Modes and Effects Analysis' started by karl w, Jan 2, 2019.

  1. karl w

    karl w Member

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    I'm very new to all of this so please bear with me, but I've searched high and low and haven't found anything helpful on this specific topic as of yet.

    I have studied FMEA quite a bit in the last couple of month and I have seen lots of severity (also occurrence & detection) tables from various users and industries.

    When specifically looking at a score of 9 or 10 for Severity, I completely get why a score of 9 or 10 is described something like this..."Doesn't comply with government regulations" or "May endanger employee with or without warning".

    I'm in the service industry without any government regulations and no employees are in any danger of being harmed. 100% office desk work.

    My thought for a Severity ranking of 9 or 10 for my industry, worse case scenario, is that our "service" or "process" failure caused significant financial loss to our Customer and/or the Customer stops doing business with us.
    - - - Does this seem like I'm on the right track?


    And lastly...does anyone have a link to an example of the full 1-10 severity ranking scale for a service industry that doesn't have government regulations or have employees in danger?
     
  2. Andy Nichols

    Andy Nichols Moderator Staff Member

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    To be honest, the number of service orgs who a) know what an FMEA is, b) have developed their own ranking system and c) are here and able to post a link to their ranking scheme is highly unlikely. Winning on the lottery may be more productive (having said that, someone will post right after this...)

    In the spirit of doing FMEAs properly, what do your people suggest?
     
  3. Jan van der Kuil

    Jan van der Kuil New Member

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    Your severity ranking should relate to what you consider relevant harms. Financial harms could be one. Some companies even use multiple scores in paralel. As a company you should generate your scoring rates.

    My only question is, why do you need a score 1-10? Why does a score 1-5 not do the trick. What will be the benefit of discussing whether the severity is a 9 or a 10, if you find it so hard to make a disctincton between a 9 or a 10. In most cases that discussion will not make a difference for the mitigating actions. I always use a 5x5 risk matrix max to prevent overcomplication.
     
  4. Andy Nichols

    Andy Nichols Moderator Staff Member

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    Better still, why use a numerical value 1 - 10 or 1 - 5 at all? The soon to be published AIAG/VDA FMEA will rank things as H-M-L as an "Action Priority" not an RPN...
     
  5. karl w

    karl w Member

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    Great info and I really appreciate the responses. I do agree with the 1-10 scoring complicating things and I've also read several compelling articles that state it can be misleading as 9x5x3 and 3x5x9 both equal 135, but the severity of 9 likely should be addressed first. I've also seen people concatenate the numbers so the effective value of the severity isn't lost, so...9-5-3 gets scored 953 vs 359 (and a scale of 1-5 seems more than sufficient when concatenation is used). I haven't heard of the AIAG/VDA H-M-L ranking but I'll do some research as I struggle to understand how H-M-L will work with the 3 scoring buckets Severity, Occurrence and Detection.
     
  6. Andy Nichols

    Andy Nichols Moderator Staff Member

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  7. karl w

    karl w Member

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    Andy Nichols likes this.