What is Windchill FRACAS?
Using the FRACAS module, you can implement a process by which to continually improve the reliability of a product, service, process, or software program. The backbone of your FRACAS is the FRACAS Incidents table. Each time an issue relating to a product or service occurs, you insert a record in this table to capture information about the incident, failure, or issue. Using this module, you:
• Record and capture all incidents related to developing and delivering a product service, process, or software program.
• Identify, select, and prioritize the incidents that are to undergo root cause analysis.
• Identify, implement, and verify the corrective actions necessary to prevent the recurrence of the root cause of the failure.
• Provide appropriate personnel with timely access to all relevant incident, analysis, and corrective action information to support reliability growth and proactive decisions to prevent similar problems from occurring in the future, thereby closing the loop.
• Use the field data being collected to adjust base prediction calculation results and track reliability over time.
While the records that capture this information are typically referred to as incidents, in some industries, they are referred to as IFRs (Incident Failure Reports). Incidents are commonly failures of some sort that occur during design, testing, production, or field operation. However, incidents can also be customer complaints, software bugs, or other issues that require tracking.
After an incident occurs, the FRACAS system is initiated and follows any number of flow paths. A summary of a common flow path for the steps taken for an incident follows:
1. Record the incident.
2. Analyze the incident.
3. Identify the corrective action.
4. Implement the corrective action.
5. Verify the corrective action and close out the incident.
In the first step of this FRACAS workflow, information about an incident is reported or entered into the System file. The incident is then sent for analysis, and the cause of the incident is determined. Next, a corrective action plan is developed and implemented to prevent the incident from recurring. Lastly, the incident is closed and cataloged for future reference.
By allowing for customizing all portions of the application, the FRACAS module is designed to support any workflow. Your FRACAS workflow can vary from this example in any number of ways.