State analysis: an alternative approach to FMEA, FTA and Markov analysis

Abstract

State analysis is an alternative functional approach to any other failure analysis technique that tries to face with current product and process design requirements. While other methodologies discover failures without a complete system understanding, state analysis focuses on finding system level failure modes by means of building a full functional model. State analysis grades failure modes in a more representative way by means of applying a customer reaction model, of combining factors, of following fuzzy rules and of including uncertainties. In this way, you are able to focus on important issues and produce field failure rate estimates with these results. Applying state analysis, a total of 635 issues have been identified in 12 sessions, of 2 hours, with an average of 7 people per session. An FMEA of a function was done with different people involved in order to compare. The results were: double time investment, 8 people involved and no critical subsystem interaction issues detected. State analysis has been found an intuitive, comprehensive and easy tool to analyze product functions, failures and design weaknesses within the IPD (integrated product design) environment.