Glossary · Functional Safety

FMEA

Also known as: Failure Mode and Effects Analysis

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis — qualitative analysis of how components fail and what they cause.

FMEA enumerates failure modes per component, scores them on severity / occurrence / detection (RPN), and identifies actions. It is widely used in automotive design and quality but is qualitative — for ISO 26262 hardware metrics, it is augmented by FMEDA.

Why it matters

FMEA is the workhorse failure analysis across automotive design and quality, but it is qualitative — for ISO 26262 hardware-metric targets it has to be augmented by FMEDA. Knowing where FMEA stops and FMEDA or FTA begins keeps a safety case from leaning on the wrong evidence for quantitative claims.

Related terms

FMEDA
Failure Mode, Effects, and Diagnostic Analysis — quantitative ISO 26262 hardware metric analysis.
FTA
Fault Tree Analysis — top-down deductive analysis of how failures combine to a hazardous event.

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