Using TRIZ to Invent Failures – Concept and Application to go Beyond Traditional FMEA

The Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a very highly established methodology for preventing failures in technical systems [1] that developed over the last five decades. It became a standard tool, especially since the introduction to the automotive industry via the QS-9000.Despite of numerous successful applications the FMEA is limited to normal expectations of occurring failures (like the non-fulfilment of a function or small deviation from an expected value) [2]. The FMEA utilizes the breakdown structure for products or processes to identify single failure causes and effects.Usually the FMEA provides no consideration of interconnected failures and failure scenarios.There are a lot of good reasons for the usage of the FMEA: it is wide spread because of being a part of international standards and engineering education for a long time. To cover these drawbacks described above, additional tools for risk analysis and risk management can be used.The Anticipatory Failure Prediction as preventive component of the Anticipatory Failure Determination (AFD) is such a method that leads to a comprehensive set of failures and failure scenarios [3], , [4].Additionally it provides procedures to “invent” possible failures in a structured but creative way [5]. Based on the analysis of both methods, ways to hybridize the methods are developed. This hybridization leads to the combination of the advantages of both methods (similar to the parallel execution of both methods), offers synergies, and expands the potential for industrial adoption by providing one elaborated tool. By using an application example the potential of the hybridized AFD-FMEA or so called Failure Mode and Effects Anticipation and Analysis (FMEAA) is pointed out.