The Psychology of Quality and More

A Toolbook for Quality Improvement and Problem Solving (contents)

Fault Tree Analysis: Examples

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When to use it | How to understand it | Example | How to use it | Practical variations

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Example

A company president recognized that its personnel evaluation system was not effective at motivating its employees, and charged the personnel department with improving it. As a part of the initial analysis of the existing system, they use FTA to identify the different ways that the evaluation system can fail and lead to demotivation (see the illustration).

Identified failure areas were investigated further, and the new system based on a correction of these failures. As a result, motivation increased significantly.

Fig. 1. Example of Fault Tree

Other examples

• A hospital team uses FTA to identify how incorrect prescriptions may be given through combinations of events. They consequently design a system to prevent such a disaster from happening.
• An airplane parts manufacturer performs FTA as a standard part of the design process to identify critical faults which could cause hazardous failure. Any subsequent failures are checked against the FTA diagram to help improve the overall process.
• A quality team in a newspaper press room uses FTA to check potential failures of an improved color registration process.

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