FMEA Builder
Every process has failure modes nobody has written down yet.
FMEA finds them before a customer does.
Severity × Occurrence × Detection scored, RPN calculated, actions prioritized. Any unobserved control gets [NEEDS GEMBA].
Problems This Solves
Three ways FMEA fails before this skill
The Formula
Risk Priority Number = S × O × D
Three independent scores, each 1–10, multiplied together. The product is the RPN, the number used to rank and prioritize corrective actions across all failure modes in the FMEA.
Severity Scale
What the score means, not just a number
Severity scores the worst-case effect of the failure mode on the customer. It does not consider how likely the failure is, or whether you'd catch it. That's Occurrence and Detection.
A Detection score of 10 means no detection method exists. A score of 1 means the failure is mistake-proof: it cannot reach the next step. High detection scores are bad. If your team's scores cluster around 2–3, ask whether they're scoring it backwards.
Sample Output
What an FMEA Builder report looks like
Process: Fill → Cool → Eject. Three failure modes scored and prioritized.
| Process Step | Failure Mode | Effect | SEV | Cause | OCC | Current Control | DET | RPN | Recommended Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fill | Short shot | Part rejected, line stop | 7 | Low melt temp | 4 | Visual check at press | 6 | 168 | Add in-mold pressure sensor |
| Cool | Sink marks | Cosmetic defect, customer return | 5 | Insufficient cool time | 5 | None | 8 | 200 | Set min cool-time interlock; add control |
| Eject | Part sticking | Scrap, tooling damage risk | 6 | Draft angle insufficient | 3 | Operator pull-check | 4 | 72 | Review tool design; plan action |
Sink marks (RPN 200) ranks highest despite lower severity than Short shot, because there is no current detection control (D=8). The skill calls this out explicitly: high Detection scores are the most actionable lever when Occurrence and Severity are fixed.
Action tiers
Three bands. Three responses.
RPN alone doesn't tell a team what to do next. The skill translates the number into a required action tier so every failure mode has an explicit owner and timeline. These are this toolkit's working bands on the older RPN method (AIAG FMEA-4), not an industry standard. The 2019 AIAG and VDA handbook replaced RPN with a separate Action Priority table, so rank severity first, and never close an item because it fell under a cut-off.
A safety or regulatory failure mode with any significant occurrence or detection gap requires immediate action regardless of the final RPN. The skill flags these separately. A Severity 9 failure mode is never just "monitor."
Examples
Manufacturing and clinical processes both supported
Injection molding PFMEA: 4 process steps (fill, cool, eject, inspect), 11 failure modes scored. Process was last FMEAed at product launch 3 years prior. Engineering review added 6 new failure modes.
Process: Injection Molding — Gear Housing
Steps: Fill · Cool · Eject · Inspect
Failure modes identified: 11
High-priority (RPN > 100): 3 — all assigned owners before session closed
New modes added vs. original FMEA: 6
[NEEDS GEMBA: confirm current detection controls for Cool and Eject steps]Medication administration PFMEA for a hospital pharmacy workflow. The skill adapts vocabulary: "customer" becomes "patient," "scrap" becomes "adverse event." Severity 9–10 modes trigger a separate patient-safety callout regardless of RPN.
Wrong medication and wrong dose failures that can reach a patient usually score at the top of the severity scale, though the scale is your team's to set (healthcare FMEA methods score severity differently). The skill ensures high-severity items are never collapsed into a "monitor" bucket by RPN alone. They surface at the top of the action list with a required immediate response.
What you get
A real run on the sample data
Unedited output. The sample message at the top went to Claude Sonnet 4.6 (an earlier-generation model, so a newer one may word things differently) with this skill pasted in, the same way the steps below show, on September 29, 2026. Scroll inside the frame to read the whole reply.
Installation
Describe the process. Get the FMEA.
resources/examples folder.Related Skills
FMEA leads to mistake-proofing and root cause
Once you have a ranked FMEA, the next question is: can we eliminate the highest-RPN failure modes entirely? Mistake-proofing answers that. If a failure has already occurred, root cause finds why.