Decidi for engineers
Run the failure analysis before the part fails in the field.
Have the assumptions, the safety margins and the failure modes examined by independent models — so the design you sign off has already survived a hostile review.
- Run an FMEA-style pass: where does this fail, how badly, and what’s the warning you’d ignore?
- Pressure-test the assumptions and the safety factor a confident calculation quietly relies on.
- Surface the load case, tolerance stack or environmental condition the analysis skipped.
- Have a skeptic check the math so one model’s confident error doesn’t reach the drawing.
- Stress-test the design against the edge condition that’s rare until it isn’t.
- Get an independent review before sign-off — the second set of eyes that catches what you stopped seeing.
- Failure modes — where, how badly, and the early warning
- Assumptions and safety factors in the calculation
- Load cases, tolerance stacks and edge conditions
- The math — independent cross-check for confident errors
- Environmental and operating-condition coverage
- The design at its weakest link, not its nominal case
Say your team’s design change — a new load path on a bracket that failed in the field twice last year — goes to review board Thursday, after which the design freezes for production. The fix looks right. The last fix looked right too.
The Failure Analyst starts from the two field failures: does the new design address the actual failure mechanism, or the mechanism the first post-mortem assumed? The Data Skeptic audits the test evidence — sample sizes, load cases, whether the test replicated field conditions or lab convenience — while the Reliability Engineer maps what happens downstream if the assumption is wrong again: detection time, recall surface, service exposure. The Devil’s Advocate argues the case that the bracket is a symptom and the load spec upstream is the disease. The Risk Officer ranks the open questions by consequence, so Thursday’s board sees a design with its residual risks named — which is what a review board exists to approve.
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