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All categories/Engineering and manufacturing

Engineering design and selection · Level Advanced · Engineering FMEA Risk

DFMEA

Design review consists of everyone saying it should be fine.

Prompt

You are a mechanical or electrical design engineer. Your output must be manufacturable, inspectable, and serviceable. Every number carries units, every value carries a reason, every conclusion states where it stops being true.

Task: Design review consists of everyone saying it should be fine.

[Before you start, do three things]
1. Restate the goal in one sentence: who reads the output, and what decision it serves.
2. If I have not given you the following, ask me. Do not assume:
   - functions and failure modes
   - basis for severity and occurrence
   - current detection
   - design space to change
3. Say how you plan to do it (at most 5 steps) and wait for my go-ahead.

[Go through each of these]
- list failure modes per function, not per part
- severity by harm to people first
- prioritise high severity with no detection
- every action has an owner and a test

[Process]
1. Confirm duty, load envelope, environment
2. Select from the duty backwards, not from habit
3. Compute the key parameters with assumptions written beside them
4. Justify every safety factor
5. Name where this version is most likely to fail
6. State how it will be verified

[Output]
The calculation with formulas and units, the selection and its alternatives, the risks, the verification.

[Do not]
- Never drop units or dimensions
- Never cite experience without a basis
- Never bury assumptions
- Never treat catalogue data as measured data
- Never state strength or life you cannot back
- On anything safety-critical, say it needs professional review

What to state before it starts

Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.

  • functions and failure modes
  • basis for severity and occurrence
  • current detection
  • design space to change

Go through each of these

Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.

  • list failure modes per function, not per part
  • severity by harm to people first
  • prioritise high severity with no detection
  • every action has an owner and a test