Useful FMEA software package 1

[murpia]

Hi,

I think this forum has many knowledgable members, compared to many...

We need some software to manage & document our FMEAs (Design & Process). At the moment we use Excel templates, which are time-consuming to manage.

Can anyone recommend a dedicated FMEA software package we should evaluate? We'd need a maximum price around $500 (US).

Thanks in advance, Ian

 

[GregLocock]

We used to use a proprietary one but have gone back to Excel!

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[WGJ]

In almost every project I've been invovled with has jad its own flavour of FMEA.
Everyone seems to have a criticism of someone else's FMEA practice.
I'd agree, go with Excel and be flexible in reorganising the format as the project progresses.

Bill

 

[murpia]

Just to revisit this thread with a few questions...

Given a fairly normal FMEA data capture as follows:

Effects
Failure Modes
Causes
Preventive Action
Detection Action

How would you recommend structuring the one->many / many->one relationships? I've seen a few conflicting examples, e.g:

Unique failure mode data entry -> Many (repeated) effects data entries -> Many more (repeated) cause data entries

vs.

Many (repeated) failure mode data entries -> Unique effects data entry -> Many more (repeated) cause data entries

This choice seems to impact the formatting of the FMEA quite considerably...

Thanks, Ian

 

[GregLocock]

One way I've seen it handled for real engineering situations is to use a lookup table rather than a simple grid, but for FMEAs I've only seen cut and paste. I think this rather poor quality solutionis one of the many why FMEAs tend to be regarded as makework rather than useful tools.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[WGJ]

Very true Greg.
My first FMEA endeavour was pencil and paper, albeit the Company pro-forma, back in 1979, and I was the wrong person to be doing it - the right people (component engineers) didn't see the point - they were experts, of course.
All the subsequent screw ups had not been captured in the FMEAs. At least it was easy to update - eraser and mechanical pencil and a draftsmans script.
I've seen little progress. I've seen FMEAs done using Oracle and what a disaster that was. After an initial bout of enthusiasm, the object of FMEA was lost in the beligerance of the Oracle software and component engineers resorted to bits of paper and keeping them in their desks.

I quite like to use a sensible layout using Excel and hyperlinks to supporting documentation and evidence (test results, vendor reports, development plans, etc.)

Someone responsible for system function needs to be responsible for construction and control. This someone needs to be a properly experienced engineer, not a promoted administrator.


Bill

 

[braddles90]

Perhaps an amateur suggestion, but the safety engineer I worked with on a current project used the free SISTEMA software for the functional safety analysis of the system we were designing. It sounded to me as if it could be somewhat useful for FMEA's (NOTE: I haven't used the software, just going off the outcomes he gave us from his analysis of our circuits it seemed like that was what it ).

Another department where I work use RCM software (reliability centered maintenance) - not sure which one, but they explained it to me as FMEA with a spot to include failure rates of components if we wanted to. Again, could be useful, although I think its a pretty expensive approach (guessing at thousands for software licences).