Why Performing FMECAs on Non-Physical Assets is Essential in 2024

As Reliability Engineers, it is our job to assess and manage risk, improve asset performance and lifecycle, and to continually improve maintenance processes. We are data and process driven, and place great importance on accuracy and efficiency. While we have various pieces of technology and software that help us to perform our roles, it is also a part of our job to be prevent and prepared for if, or when, those items fail.

As a society in general, we are highly dependent on modern day technology, and become acutely aware of it when it doesn’t perform as we expect it to. Take for example the Optus Outage late last year, that left millions of people without access to any phone or internet network, leaving them unable to even contact 000. This outage lasted for over 8 hours and cost the company $61mil AUD to rectify.

When non-physical assets fail, there are usually limited warning signs and the corrective actions to perform are generally not well documented, or easy to ascertain which to use. This can lead to catastrophic outcomes for organisations, as we rely on technology to perform as we expect it to with little to no maintenance and take its omnipresence for granted.

How do we understand and mitigate the risks that non-physical assets pose to organisations? How do we comprehensively gain a collaborative understanding of the effect a non-physical asset failure has at an organisational-wide level? As you would on a physical piece of equipment, you conduct a Failure Modes and Effects Criticality Analysis (FMECA). While it is not an industry standard approach to do this on equipment like software, these are some reasons why it should be.

The FMECA process is resource-heavybut deemed as a necessary investment to maintain a positive financial Return on Investment (ROI) for an expensive and business-critical asset, and mitigate risks to health and safety, finances, the environment, and compliance. Investing hours of time into analysing the risks of the physical failure of an asset, the impact it has on the organisation and potential corrective actions is useless in an event where the asset fails due to a non-physical component.

Take for example a geo radar used in mining, that operates 24/7 to ensure the safety and integrity of the mine walls, reporting even the slightest detection of movement of the dirt. This piece of equipment is integral to the health and safety of every single staff member working within the mine, as well as preventing financial losses due to a mine collapse. While this piece of equipment has physical components that require maintenance, there are also several non-physical components that could cause unplanned failure of the machine.

For example, the firewall could fail due to outdated software, which would result in network downtime and leave them open to a cyber-attack. If the asset is no longer live reporting on the safety and integrity of the mine walls, protocol may be to evacuate the mine – resulting in a serious loss of revenue. If the Virtual Machine Host (VM Host) fails, the server session would be disconnected and the entire radar system shut down – again, resulting in potential mine closure while the issue is rectified.

If an asset is deemed to be business critical and requires a FMECA to be conducted, then it is not truly a full failure analysis if all components aren’t considered. With time already being spent to complete the FMECA on the physical components of the asset, it would be beneficial to extend that analysis to include the non-physical components, as the excess time spent would be negligible compared to the benefits gained from the FMECA process.

Non-physical assets play a crucial role in modern organisations, yet their potential failure modes and effects are often less recognized and understood compared to their physical counterparts.

Given the intricate interconnectedness of digital, virtual, and software-based components within critical assets, it’s imperative to conduct a FMECA on non-physical assets. This proactive approach allows organisations to address vulnerabilities that may not be immediately apparent, enhancing overall risk management and fortifying business continuity strategies.

By scrutinising non-physical asset and asset components, businesses can uncover concealed risks, proactively implement mitigation measures, and safeguard against unforeseen failures that could have significant repercussions on operational, financial, and safety aspects.

Non-physical components within equipment, particularly automated technology and software, frequently wield the most extensive influence, delivering the highest impact and posing the greatest risk. They also have a tendency to be taken for granted within a maintenance department – particularly if they haven’t yet experienced a failure from that equipment, as there is no physical sign of wear like there would be on its physical counterpart.

While less conspicuous than physical assets, these digital elements often serve as the cornerstone of operational integrity, safety, and financial viability. In modern machinery and critical systems, the seamless functionality of non-physical components is paramount. Issues such as software vulnerabilities, network downtime, and cyber-attacks can swiftly cascade into widespread operational disruption, financial losses, compromised safety measures, and regulatory non-compliance.

Consequently, conducting a comprehensive FMECA to encompass these non-physical components becomes essential, allowing organisations to proactively address vulnerabilities and fortify their risk mitigation strategies.

Knowledge is power. If we go back to the fundamentals of the FMECA process, the intent behind the analysis is to proactively identify, assess, and mitigate the potential failure modes within a system or asset. The goal of the FMECA is to systematically identify the severity and the likelihood of failures occurring.

Often for non-physical assets, there is little preventative maintenance that can be done to prevent a failure – aside from routine checks and software updates. The FMECA process ensures that even these small steps are considered and put into place, but the main goal is to comprehensively understand how a non-physical asset failing can affect the wider operation of an organisation.

Where you may not go into the creation of specific Work Instructions for a non-physical asset, time can be better spent deep diving into the full effect that component has on a global level to the organisation. For assets that combine physical and non-physical components, it allows the maintenance team to gain a rich understanding of how they interact with each other and how their failure modes can affect the overall function of the equipment.

By focusing on the fundamentals of FMECA – that is identifying the ways it can fail, the effects of those failure modes and the criticality of that failure, you can start to assess, control and manage your risk profile.

Something to consider about non-physical asset failure is that it can be easily overlooked, and when a failure does occur there is often a lack of clarity in how to resolve the situation. By developing a FMECA on non-physical assets, it ensures a few different things;

Firstly, The team are equipped to solve the failure.

By pre-empting the failure modes of non-physical equipment, corrective actions and potential fixes can also be documented. This saves valuable time and resources if an unplanned outage occurs, and should the personnel lack the understanding of the non-physical asset, the information is documented for them to access quickly as required.

Secondly, It prompts you to think about the resources needed to resolve a failure.

Another benefit to the process, particularly on a non-physical asset, is that it prompts those engaged in the FMECA facilitation to consider whether the resources to rectify the failure are available to the maintenance team.

This could look like spare parts or redundancy justification, particularly for high-value and high-criticality equipment. Alternatively, it could look like ensuring the right resources are in place from a staff perspective, with sufficient product knowledge to rectify the failure should one occur.

Not everyone can be involved in the FMECA facilitation process, nor does everyone have a comprehensive understanding of how non-physical assets work and affect the components and systems around them. Particularly with software, it can be difficult for those who haven’t worked with the equipment to understand how it affects items around it.

By facilitating a FMECA on a non-physical asset, you are consolidating all the knowledge in a maintenance team and documenting it for future reference. This is by far one of the most valuable parts of the FMECA in general – not just for non-physical assets either.

For all equipment, the FMECA should be a living document. This means that it should be constantly reviewed with updated information, and any failures not recorded already in it. Your Root Cause Analysis (RCA) should feed back into the document and update it with preventative maintenance tasks.

All of this allows the FMECA to be used as a troubleshooting guide, where personnel can identify the local effects of a failure and potentially pick up on warning signs before an asset fails.

Ultimately this comes down to your organisation’s approach to risk assessment – if a FMECA is usually required for assets of a certain value, then it is prudent to continue to follow that. A good rule of thumb is if you are doing a FMECA on the physical components of an asset, consider going through the process for the non-physical components, too.

Otherwise, consider going through the FMECA process for business-critical assets such as:

• Firewalls
• Software systems and firmware
• IT infrastructure
• Networks
• Virtual machines
• Vehicle dispatch systems
• Predictive Maintenance Systems
• Communication Systems
• Radar Systems
• Cloud-based data storage systems

These are just some examples of equipment that could benefit from a FMECA.

As our dependency on technology increases, so does the requirement to go through the FMECA process on those non-physical components and assets. Whether that be a digital, virtual, of software-based component or asset, they play a critical role in the function of modern organisations. Despite this, their failure modes and the effects and criticality of those modes are far less recognised or understood than their physical counterparts.

Conducting a FMECA on assets and components that are non-physical allows you to uncover hidden risks, proactively implement mitigation measures and corrective actions, and gain a comprehensive understanding of how they affect other systems and components around them, as well as the effects a failure could cause to them.

These assets can have a widespread effect on an organisation, particularly if they form part of an automated process as they have the tendency to be overlooked. If a FMECA isn’t being done on non-physical assets, then a site risk-assessment is not fully completed and your organisation could be left open to unplanned failures, resulting in great financial loss, operational dysfunction, compromised workplace safety or even regulatory non-compliance.

As non-physical components and assets have such a widespread impact on organisation-wide operations, understanding the ways in which they can fail and the effects and criticality of that failure it is just as important, if not more so, to conduct a FMECA on them.