Narayanagounder et al. (2009) addressed the drawbacks in traditional FMEA and proposed a new approach to overcome these shortcomings. The Risk Priority Code (RPC) was used to prioritize failure modes, when two or more failure modes have the same RPN. They proposed a new method to prioritize failure modes, when there is a disagreement in ranking scale for severity, occurrence and detection. An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to compare means of RPN values. SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) statistical analysis package is used to analyze the data. The results presented by them are based on two case studies. It was found that the proposed new methodology/approach resolves the limitations of traditional FMEA approach.
Arvanitoyannis and Varzakas (2009) had applied Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) model in conjunction with cause-and-effect analysis for the risk assessment of octopus processing (Octopus vulgaris). Critical control points were identified and implemented in the cause-and-effect diagram (also known as Ishikawa, tree diagram and fishbone diagram). The main emphasis was put on the quantification of risk assessment by determining the risk priority numbers (RPN) per identified processing hazard. Chemically contaminated product, decomposed raw materials, scombrotoxin presence in the final product, incorrectly labelled product, storage in cans (foreign matter) and defective products, were identified as those with the highest RPN (378, 294, 280, 252, 245 and 144 respectively) and corrective actions were undertaken. Following the application of corrective actions, a second calculation of RPN values was carried out, leading to considerably lower values (below the upper acceptable limit of 130). It was concluded that the incorporation of FMEA analysis within the ISO2200 system of an octopus-processing industry is imperative.