Organizational Applications of Failure Knowledge Management

In and after about the year 2000, organizations have started to build databases of workers’ accidents, troubles in the production processes, and customer complaints to make positive use of such failure information. For quantifying such organizational applications and clarifying their problems, we developed a new worksheet, “Failure Knowledge Application Evaluation Sheet (FKAES)”, and conducted a survey by having members of the Association for the Study of Failure fill out the worksheet. Our research disclosed the following facts with organizations. They properly feedback failures that require action in the production and inspection processes, however, do not identify those that require action in the planning or development processes as failures because they have organizational causes rather than technical. Large corporations with 1,000 or more employees practice more applications than smaller ones, and some even publicize their failure applications to customers and stockowners.