Integration of FMEA and the Kano model: An exploratory examination

In almost all of the existing resources of failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA), “severity” is being determined from the designers’ point of view, not from the customers’ side. In this paper, a new approach is proposed to enhance FMEA capabilities through its integration with Kano model. This evolves the current approaches for determination of severity and “risk priority number” (RPN) through classifying severities according to customers’ perceptions. It supports the nonlinear relationship between frequency and severity of failure. Also a new index called “correction ratio” (Cr) is proposed to assess the corrective actions in FMEA. The findings of a short case study highlight the gap between managers and customers in prioritising a set of failures and the difference between RPN and Cr prioritisations, caused by target failure frequencies. The proposed approach enables managers/designers to prevent failures at early stages of design, based on customers who have not experienced their products/services yet.