The Global Actions feature was introduced with Version 6.0 of the IQ Software…yet, in my travels training many engineers across the globe, it seems many remain unaware of the efficiency gains it offers. Take a fresh look at this little powerhouse of functionality. The ‘Action’ objects in the IQ software are the root elements of […]
As I perused my blog entries the other day, I noticed that I’d been writing primarily about FMEA fundamentals. This isn’t a bad thing per-se, but it does exclude a whole realm of other topics that are of interest to our APIS readership. So I’m decidedly switching gears to a more of a “how to” […]
Understanding Customer Needs In order to really understand what to deliver from your FMEA analysis, you need a deep understanding of what your “customers” need from it. Along these lines, we can take note of the recent passing of Dr. Akao, the founding father of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and its true impact on our […]
According to Newton’s first law of motion, sometimes referred to as the law of inertia, an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an external force. It’s not too much of a stretch to apply […]
Have you spent hours debating how to properly rate the failures in your Design FMEAs only to realize that the calculated Risk Priority Numbers (RPN) are suggesting you address issues that you know aren’t the ones you should be working on? I thought so… One of the most fundamentally important aspects of the FMEA is […]
What’s your strategy for getting through a maze? What if, when you chose a path, you could know ahead of time that it wasn’t a dead end and that you’d get your cheese? What if you could know, at every decision point, that each move was the right move? Is that cheating? Well, maybe, if […]
About 12 years ago, while earning my 6Sigma Master Black Belt certification, I was in the midst of training hundreds of Green & Black Belt students how to apply the continuous improvement methodology at their place of work. Their belt certification required that they engage in training marathons and persevere through the completion of approved […]
The IQ-Software instantiates the foundation for building our FMEAs, according to five basic steps as defined in the instructions of the VDA 96, Volume 4.2. Following these steps gives your FMEA the structure required to ensure a thorough analysis with no opportunity for confusing failure modes for causes or effects. Furthermore, the 5-Step process gives […]
In one of my previous entries, “Strength of FMEA Process in the Analysis,” I emphasized the significance and benefits of both perceiving and creating the FMEA as an analysis worthy of our time and energy. This only happens when the analysis delivers value. Where’s the Value? “Value may also be expressed as a straightforward relationship between perceived benefits […]
In my recent blog,”Model-Based FMEA”, I wrote about the functional model serving as the basis of the Design FMEA in the IQ-Software. The basic premise is that we will fully know the failures when we understand the function; only when we deviate from the function (in a significant way), do we achieve “failure.” Through this […]
