Tuesday, March 12, 2013

PFMEA Malaise

Time for an annual rant about the lack of PFMEA utilization within our manufacturing plants. It is 2013 people! How many more times will we ship a part "missing a hole"? Yes, the PFMEA form and process can be tedious. The risk ranking values can become a heated and lengthy topic themselves. However, the essence of the PFMEA, the search for potential defects and potential causes, is readily available. Unfortunately, still now as it has been through my quality history since around 1996, most PFMEAs are boilerplate written by one person. Hasn't the pain been enough? Can't we all get along? Get the team together. Stand at the process. Brainstorm. Could the process be skipped? Can the part go into the fixture upside down? Can the insertion be misaligned? on and on. Capture what you talked about and come up with prevention and control idea. Does anyone have a good example of how a team does an effective PFMEA? I would like to hear about it.

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