The Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a qualitative reliability technique for systematically analyzing each possible failure mode within a hardware system, and identifying the resulting effect on that system, the mission, personnel and the environment. The optional criticality analysis (CA) element is a quantitative procedure which ranks failure modes according to their probability and consequences (i.e. the resulting effect of the failure mode on system, mission, personnel or the environment).

The FMEA and CA (FMECA together), were the first systematic techniques for failure analysis. They were introduced as an aid in designing and documenting military systems in the late 1950's, and subsequently developed by NASA as a means of assuring that hardware built for space applications had the desired reliability characteristics. In the offshore industry FMEA and FMECA have been increasingly utilized during the last 10 years. For Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) analyses the FMECA is a powerful means to develop insight in the system and to identify relevant subsystems/failure modes to be accounted for. There are a number of areas today in which the use of FMECA has become mandatory to demonstrate system reliability. Examples of such requirements are in classification of Dynamically Positioned (DP) vessels and in a number of military applications.

FMECA technique should always be performed initially in a RAM study. More details on FMECA can be found in IEC 60812 /1/, which describes Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA). It gives guidance as to how they may be applied; by providing the procedural steps necessary to perform an analysis; by identifying appropriate terms, assumptions, criticality measures, failure modes; by determining ground rules and by providing examples of the necessary forms.