Abstract

Design failure mode and effects analysis, when viewed instead as design failure mode and effects avoidance, takes a proactive approach to evaluating the reliability of products by focusing on the possible failure modes in the design phase with a mind toward excluding, rather than gaming out, failure modes. This alternative, preventive thinking gives the engineering team time to integrate more failure mode countermeasures into the design of the product, rather than being forced to absorb the impact of the failures later, when they are guaranteed to affect the bottom line.