When you’re planning a large scale program or process, it’s usually a good idea to have a contingency plan in place. You may not be able to predict everything that could go wrong – but you can plan for most scenarios. FMEA is part of the Six Sigma toolkit used to map out potential “failures” in a process and plan alternatives or safeguards.

The process can be as simple or complex as your program. For scoring use numbers 1 - 10, with 10 as the worst outcome. Use a spreadsheet to document the following:

• First, break the program into process steps.

• Take each step and identify potential causes for failure within that step and rate the potential severity if that failure occurs. (severity)

• Identify the causes for those failures and estimate how likely they are to occur (occurrence)

• Rate your ability to detect each of those failures - with a 10 representing no ability to detect and a 1 being very obvious to detect (detection)

• Finally multiply (severity x occurrence x detection) to determine the risk priority number (RPN) for each event. The highest RPN scores should be addressed first.