A FRACAS can be effectively tailored and applied beyond the traditional tracking of hardware failures. However, to perform a qualitative assessment, such as whether a customer is satisfied with a product or service, or a quantitative assessment, such as whether the reliability performance goals of a product or service have been achieved, you must use a FRACAS consistently.

The Failure Reporting, Analysis and Corrective Action System (FRACAS) Application Guidelines is available from the Reliability Information Analysis Center (RIAC). In explaining the critical elements of a FRACAS, this document provides definitions for a failure, failure events, and failure classifications, all of which are provided in the following topics:

Your organization should either adopt these definitions or agree to use ones that are as clearly constructed.