Purpose of FMEA is to analyse the design
characteristics relative to the planned manufacturing
process as to ensure the resultant product meets the
customer needs and expectations. When potential failure
modes are identified, corrective action can be taken to
eliminate or continually reduce the potential for
occurrence. The FMEA approach also documents the
rationale for a particular manufacturing process. FMEA
provides an organized, critical analysis of potential failure
modes of the system being defined and identifies
associated causes. It uses occurrence and detection
probabilities in conjunction with a severity criterion to
develop a risk priority number (RPN) for ranking
corrective action considerations. When potential failure
modes are identified, corrective action can be taken to
eliminate them or to continually reduce a potential
occurrence. (Mario Villacourt, 1992).