Global Failure Modes and Effects Analysis: A Planning Tool for Global Product Development Available to Purchase

This paper presents an advanced application of Failure Modes and Effect and Analysis (FMEA) to facilitate globally distributed projects. Recent research in global engineering focuses on the enhancement of collaborative media, yet few studies investigate in design methodologies to guide global product development. Global FMEA (GFMEA) is an attempt to coordinate the planning activities of globally distributed projects and to provide a leading indicator in addressing delays and quality problems. Using risk as a quantifiable metric, GFMEA assesses potential global work distribution failure modes with project complexity and proposes mitigation plans according to the selected distributed scenarios. GFMEA synchronizes the visions within the planning team to ensure the company’s objectives strategically align with the project goals. This paper begins with a description of the GFMEA development followed by an industry case study to illustrate the concept. The paper concludes with a discussion of GFMEA limitations and usage as well as suggests improvements for the next iteration.