FMEA Data Levels

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FMEA Data Levels

You can organize FMEA data into as many as five levels: items, modes, causes, effects, and actions. The following table describes these data levels. The Project’s FMEA Design file defines the hierarchy of FMEA data levels for all System files in the Project. For more information, see FMEA Design Files.

Data Level	Description
Item	The part, assembly, input or output, or functional block to evaluate. At the part level, there is generally only one item. At the assembly or system level, there are generally multiple items. Each item describes a function associated with the assembly. Each item is further described by their potential failure modes.
Mode	A failure mode associated with the item. Most items have more than one mode. Each mode is further described by the causes associated with it.
Cause	A determinant or reason for the occurrence of the mode. Most modes have multiple causes. Each cause is further described by the effects associated with it.
Effect	A consequence or event associated with the cause. Most causes have multiple effects. An effect is generally classified as local effect, next effect, or end effect.
Action	An action to take to remedy a failure. Actions can only be children of causes and are available only if Multiple Causes is selected for the FMEA data structure in the Project’s FMEA Design file.

In the properties for the FMEA Design file, you can replace labels for data levels with other singular and plural nouns. For more information, see Specifying Custom Names for FMEA Data Levels.