yogsoth-ai Design FMEA Strategy
Systematic failure analysis at the research design level: what functions can fail, how, and with what consequence?
Method
- function-analysis decomposes artifact into function tree
- failure-mode-extraction identifies how each function can fail
- failure-chain-construction builds cause → mode → effect chains
- severity-scoring, occurrence-scoring, detection-scoring rate each mode
- action-priority-matrix classifies priority (H/M/L)
- mitigation-design-sop proposes countermeasures for H-priority items
Budget Table
| Parameter | S | M | L |
|---|---|---|---|
| Functions analyzed | 4 | 10 | 20 |
| Failure modes per function | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Chain depth (cause levels) | 2 | 4 | 6 |
| Mitigations designed | 3 | 8 | 15 |
Orchestration
function-analysis → failure-mode-extraction → failure-chain-construction
→ [severity-scoring, occurrence-scoring, detection-scoring] (parallel)
→ action-priority-matrix → mitigation-design-sop
→ re-scoring (mitigation-validation tactic)
Subagents
- function-analysis (decompose function tree)
- failure-mode-extraction (identify failure modes)
- failure-chain-construction (cause-mode-effect chains)
- severity-scoring, occurrence-scoring, detection-scoring (S/O/D)
- action-priority-matrix (priority classification)
- mitigation-design-sop (countermeasure design)
Available Tactics
Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.
| Tactic | When to use |
|---|---|
| failure-chain-tracing | Tactic: Trace upstream causes and downstream effects of each failure mode. Builds multi-level cause-mode-effect chains for systemic understanding. |
| mitigation-validation | Tactic: Run mini-FMEA on proposed mitigations to verify they do not introduce new failure modes. Prevents mitigation-induced risks. |
Available SOPs
Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.
| SOP | When to use |
|---|---|
| action-priority-matrix | Compute Risk Priority Number (RPN = S x O x D), classify failure modes into H/M/L action priority per AIAG-VDA tables. |
| detection-scoring | Rate detectability 1-10 (inverted: 10 = hardest to detect). Estimates how likely current controls would catch the failure before impact. |
| failure-chain-construction | Build cause-mode-effect chains tracing upstream root causes and downstream cascading effects for each failure mode. |
| failure-mode-extraction | Extract structured failure mode list from raw scenarios or artifact analysis. Produces standardized failure mode records. |
| function-analysis | FMEA Step 3: Decompose artifact into function tree — identify what each component is supposed to do before analyzing how it can fail. |
| mitigation-design-sop | Design prevention, detection, and response measures for high-priority failure modes. Produces actionable countermeasure specifications. |
| occurrence-scoring | Rate failure mode occurrence probability 1-10. Estimates how likely each failure mode is to manifest during research execution. |
| severity-scoring | Rate failure mode severity 1-10 based on end-effect impact. Follows AIAG-VDA severity scale calibrated for research artifacts. |