[SystemSafety] FMEA draft international standard

[Derek M Jones]

All,

Anyone interested in getting involved in their own country can
find contact details here (if your country has not paid it dues
to be a member of IEC TC 56 you cannot take part):
http://www.iec.ch/dyn/www/f?p=103:29:0::::FSP_ORG_ID,FSP_LANG_ID:1270,25

TC 56/WG2 is the working group responsible for IEC 60812
http://www.iec.ch/dyn/www/f?p=103:14:0::::FSP_ORG_ID,FSP_LANG_ID:2378,25

The documents on the IEC site are password protected.
Here in the UK people can sign up to be members of an ISO
committee for free (and thus gain password access).  I
suspect the same is also true of IEC committees here in the UK,
but don't know for sure since I have not tried recently.

> There is a Committee Draft (CD) of a revised standard IEC 60812 on FMEA, Failure Modes and Effects
> Analysis, now circulating for comments.
>
> We (my tech-transfer company Causalis) have recently completed part of an FMEA for a client on what
> looks at first sight like a piece of relatively simple kit. What is most important to our client is,
> first, that the analysis is right, and, second, that it is thorough.
>
> We have ways to do that. However, the CD of IEC 60812 has no word on methods to check whether an
> FMEA is right. Nor, indeed, on methods to check whether it is thorough (see Footnote). How can that
> be? (In this case, I actually know first hand how that can be.)
>
> My colleague nominally on the committee (known as a Maintenance Team or MT) suggests with some
> lytotes that the CD does not represent the current state of the art. He also suggests that the most
> effective way of dealing with this issue is for as many engineers as possible to comment on the
> draft. The MT is required to consider each and every comment and to respond.
>
> But getting such a process underway is not trivial. First, people have to obtain a copy of the CD.
> Then they have to download and engage with ("fight with" is maybe a more appropriate phrase) the IEC
> comment form, which is easy to use if your computer screen has A3 landscape format and monstrously
> frustrating if it doesn't. Then they have to send the comments to their National Committee
> representative on the IEC 60812 MT, so they have to find out who that is from their national
> standards organisation.
>
> Let me try to ease that somewhat. If you wish to read and comment the CD of IEC 60812 FMEA, let me
> know by email by this Friday, 18 July, and I'll see what we can figure out to get your comments into
> the process chain. Time is short. I know comments in Germany have to be in by 8 August.
>
> PBL
>
> Footnote: there is of course a technical term for "right", as well as one for "thorough". Namely,
> correctness, resp. completeness. Next time someone tries to tell you "completeness is impossible",
> think about what they are really saying!
>
> Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany
> Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> The System Safety Mailing List
> systemsafety at TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE
> .
>

-- 
Derek M. Jones                  tel: +44 (0) 1252 520 667
Knowledge Software Ltd          blog:shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com
Software analysis               http://www.knosof.co.uk