FMEA is a technique used to identify possible process and product problems before they occur. It focuses on how and when a system will fail, not if it will fail. Each failure mode is assessed for:
Severity (SEV) = how serious is the consequence
Occurrence (OCC) = how likely is the failure
Detection (DET) = how capable is the current process at detecting the failure
A combination of the three scores produces a Risk Priority Number (RPN). The RPN is then used to prioritize which problems should be addressed first.
