Rectifying FMEA-the inter-crossing method

Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) is one of the most important analysis tools in reliability engineering However, some failure causes may be very difficult to detect when using only FMEA, and we found no methodical way to circumvent this limitation. This article describes the inter-crossing method, that significantly decreases the chance of failing to notice failure causes. The method that we propose is systematic; it enables one to "scan" the design and to expose elusive failure causes.