Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)
A structured safety-engineering method, long standard in aerospace, automotive, and medical-device work, for listing every way a system can fail, how likely, how detectable, and how severe each failure is. Applied to AI, the method is unchanged but the failure modes (fabrication, variance, silent error) are new.
Defined in 3 GAGE programs, which carry 3 distinct definitions of it. The wording above is taught in AI Governance: Applied Mastery.
How each discipline defines it
The same term does different work depending on who is using it. These are the definitions as each program teaches them, unedited.
A structured safety-engineering method, long standard in aerospace, automotive, and medical-device work, for listing every way a system can fail, how likely, how detectable, and how severe each failure is. Applied to AI, the method is unchanged but the failure modes (fabrication, variance, silent error) are new.
An inductive, bottom-up method that examines each component or function of a system, identifies its plausible failure modes, and traces forward to the effect of each failure mode on the system, scoring severity, occurrence, and detection to prioritize which failure modes need attention first.
A long-established risk method from manufacturing and medicine that scores each failure mode on severity, occurrence, and detection and multiplies them into a Risk Priority Number to rank what to fix first. The direct ancestor of the three-axis AI method.
Where it is taught
The exact lessons this term appears in. The first 7 topics of every program are free with a free account.
- Risk Assessment in AI Decisions · Critical Thinking and Context Engineering, AI Literacy & Professional Conduct
- The license to govern: explaining to a skeptic exactly how your model fails · Build Before You Govern, AI Governance: Applied Mastery
Terms it appears with
Not an alphabetical neighbourhood: these are the terms taught in the same lessons, ranked by how often they appear together.