A case of FMEA implementation in the educational sector and integration with CRM and QFD concepts

This paper is an application of failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) to the educational operations. The process of managing the practical training for students in one of the bachelor-degree program was chosen as the case study. Ultimately, the attempt of this research was to improve the process efficiency and reduce the failures of the particular process. Only top-five ranked failures were considered to reduce. By practice, FMEA can be used to pinpoint and analyze the failure modes; however, by itself FMEA cannot reduce the causes of failure. Therefore, other concepts were introduced to the research; customer relationship management (CRM) and quality function deployment (QFD). These two concepts operated in different angles. Their applications allowed to improve the process efficiency due to the causes of failure reduction. Since some of those failures were stated from the lack of connection and proper communication with organizations who offered the places for training. CRM was considered as the wise solution and it was applied to improve the efficiency of process and also to enhance the relationship with those organizations. Another failure was analyzed as resulting from the lack of student preparation. Accordingly, QFD was a support tool to design an intensive course for student preparation.