6. FMEA(C) limits

6.1 FMEA's reputation for completeness

FMEA(C) has the reputation of being an exhaustive method. Its systematic (even tedious) nature justifies it, provided the conditions for success are met and within the limits of the method:

• insofar as the decomposition of the system omits no element, and all possible failure modes of each element are known and exploited, the systematic nature of the method effectively guarantees that all failure modes are taken into account;

• but the method does not produce an exhaustive list of common modes, nor does it systematically evaluate failure combinations