FMEA as tool in Project Management

Abstract

In our days, with the constant surge of global competition and the globalization of markets, the success of project implementation and management depends largely from the organization’s business performance. These affairs have brought many changes in terms of economic, technological and marketing basis. The investment and implementation of a new technology require a serious effort from the organization’s because most of the times deal with factors such as risk, complexity, innovation and lacking of resources. All these factors, among others, can be considered as extremely important challenges from the special workforce of the companies, that’s why it is very common for companies to set up and implement new special projects in order to face them as effective and as quick as possible.

Based on that, identifying and alleviate project risks are very important steps in achieving successful project management and therefore successful projects. Nevertheless, methods and tools for risk assessment and risk management that have been developed and implemented to increase the possibilities of project success are not yet extensive or easily adopted. However, one of the most well-known and widespread methods is Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). FMEA as Project Management tool allows to:

•Evaluate a process to identify where and how it might fail

•Identify the failure causes

•Assess the relative impact of different failures

•Anticipate potential problems before they occur

On top of that, it is generally accepted that when FMEA is used as a Project Risk Management tool, it can be labeled also as project risk FMEA or RFMEA. So, the RFMEA technique is not just another way of analyzing project risks but helps focus the risk contingency planning, required early in the project on critical risks. Finally, this method is highlighted as very important in the engineering management community.