In many projects we have seen quite a few industrial risk assessment procedures and worked on many risk assessment examples. We have been involved in engineering failure analysis back and forth, like FMEA Failure Modes and Effects Analysis or FTA Fault Tree Analysis.
However, we have to draw the conclusion: even when established system analysis tools are used, these analyses often cause significant effort
- to be performed initially for a new technical or non-technical system in the first place,
- to be updated after modifications of the system design at a later stage and
- to reuse the findings for a variation of the system design.
And because it needs so much effort, many engineers consider it as “necessary evil”, (too) late in the design process – and try to keep the effort low by keeping the number of system iterations low. Iterating only once or twice, then that’s it, continue with the next steps in the product development process. Very probably with a suboptimal design, which might cause higher operational costs later.
But why is it so cumbersome and difficult?
The Idea