Two failure modes. Same RPN. One of them can kill someone.
RPN is the number most failure mode analyses get prioritised on, and on its own it is a poor guide to risk. Two days on running a full FMECA, Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis, that ends in decisions your planners actually action, including the point where criticality overrides the score.
Four things you can do on the Monday
Most FMECAs fail at the same three points: the boundary is never agreed, the effects are written vaguely, and the output never becomes a maintenance task. This course is built around fixing all three.
Set a boundary that holds
Define the system boundary and asset hierarchy before the workshop starts. Most FMECAs that stall stall here, three hours in, arguing about what is in scope.
Write effects a planner can act on
Function statements, failure modes, causes and effects written so the next person can build a task from them without asking you what you meant.
Know when RPN is lying to you
Score severity, occurrence and detection consistently, then apply criticality analysis to catch the high consequence, low frequency modes that RPN buries.
Finish with actions, not a spreadsheet
Take the analysis through to assigned actions and a maintenance change. An FMECA that ends at the register was a workshop, not a result.
Two days, sixteen sessions
Day one gets you to a properly scoped analysis. Day two is the scoring, the criticality call, and turning it into work.
- 1Introduction to FMECA. What it is for and where it earns its cost.
- 2Process overview. The full sequence and the common places it stalls.
- 3Assembling a cross functional team. Who has to be in the room, and who derails it.
- 4System boundary and asset hierarchy. Agreeing scope before anyone opens a template.
- 5Gather and review relevant information. What to pull from the CMMS, drawings and history.
- 6Identify functions. Writing a function statement that survives review.
- 7Identify failure modes and causes. Telling a mode from a cause, consistently.
- 8Identify failure effects. Local, system and end effect, written to be actioned.
- 9Severity rating. Building a scale your site will apply the same way twice.
- 10Occurrence rating. Assessing likelihood against evidence rather than opinion.
- 11Current controls. What is actually in place, not what the procedure says.
- 12Detection rating. Whether you would really see it coming.
- 13Risk Priority Number. Calculating it, reading it, and knowing its limits.
- 14Criticality analysis. The method that catches what RPN buries.
- 15Action and maintenance. Turning findings into assigned tasks and a plan change.
- 16Recap and close. Where it feeds next and how to keep it alive.
Bring an asset worth analysing
Day two runs best when the team scores a real asset rather than a worked example. Pick one piece of equipment that has been causing arguments, bring its failure history and its drawings, and leave with a started FMECA on it.
Who this is for
Anyone who will facilitate one
Running the workshop is a different skill from attending it. This course is built for the person who has to hold the room and keep the analysis honest.
Reliability and maintenance engineers
If you build maintenance strategy from failure modes, this is the analysis that should be feeding it.
Planners, supervisors and risk teams
The people who receive the output. Understanding how it was built is what stops it being ignored.
What you need before you start
No prior FMECA experience is assumed and there is no prerequisite course. Working knowledge of the equipment you maintain is worth more here than any qualification.
FMECA is where a maintenance strategy starts
Failure modes are the input to everything downstream. Teams that take the chain together end up with a rebuilt plan rather than three separate analyses.
FMECA Foundations
2 days. Identify the failure modes and rank them honestly.
RCM Foundations
3 days. Decide which maintenance task actually addresses each mode.
Maintenance Plan Optimisation
3 days. Set the intervals, cost them, and rebuild the plan.
Learn the analysis. Then run it in whatever you already have.
FMECA is a method, not a product. Teams get sent on software training, come back, and the analysis dies with the licence. This course teaches the method first and then shows you three ways to run it.
Excel
A properly built FMECA worksheet with the scoring scales, the criticality view and the action register already set up. Yours to keep and reuse.
The free template on this site
The Simplified FMEA Template is free to download from this site, whether you train with us or not. No account and no licence.
Your existing suite
Already running a reliability platform? The method transfers directly. We cover where a database earns its cost over a spreadsheet, and where it does not.
The Simplified FMEA Template is free, whether you train with us or not
Download it, use it on your next analysis, and bring it to the course. This course is where the template becomes a full FMECA: consistent scoring, the criticality step, and actions a planner can schedule.
Learn the method. Then put AI to work on it.
Understand the analysis first, leave with the templates, then use AI to do in hours what used to take days. The course closes with a working session on exactly that, inside your site’s IT and confidentiality rules.
What AI accelerates
Drafting candidate failure modes, causes and effects from OEM manuals, drawings and work order history before the workshop starts, so the room challenges a draft instead of staring at a blank register.
What stays with the team
Severity and consequence calls carry accountability. AI proposes, the cross functional team disposes, and every rating stays owned by a person who can defend it.
What you leave with
A prompting guide written for reliability work, a prompt library for FMECA, and a setup checklist for using AI within site IT and data rules.
We run our own operation this way. The AI workflows taught here are the ones we use to deliver client work, from OEM manual extraction to draft failure mode registers.
Three ways to take it. One seat or the whole crew.
Every course runs in all three formats. On site is priced as an engagement rather than per head, so crew size is your call. Public and online cohorts confirm once a small minimum books, and every booking is protected: if a date does not confirm, you choose the next cohort, the online session, or a full refund.
Public classroom
Runs in our training room in Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast. Book one seat or several and work alongside engineers from other operations. Dates confirm once the cohort reaches its minimum.
Live online
Same instructor, same exercises, delivered live rather than recorded. Confirms on a smaller cohort than the classroom, and it is the route in from anywhere outside the Sunshine Coast.
On site at your operation
We come to you and the analysis runs on your equipment. Priced as an engagement, not per head.
Taught by the engineers who run these workshops for a living
Not career trainers. The person at the front of the room facilitates FMECAs on operating mines and plants, and brings those workshops into the course.
Delivered by the engineering bench, not a training department
Courses are taught by HolisticAM reliability engineers who deliver this same work for clients between courses. Whoever stands at the front ran this analysis on an operating site recently, so the examples are current and the answers are practical.
Proven in delivery
Training is a delivery arm of the consultancy. The most recent full program trained 26 engineers and maintainers at a major Pacific gold operation, delivered live online, with certificates of completion issued.
It gets used on the Monday
Within days of that delivery, attendees were sending their own analyses of live plant equipment back to the trainer for review. That is the outcome every course here is built for.
The session was informative, well-structured and incredibly helpful. The knowledge gained will certainly enhance my RCA facilitation skills at work.
This course was terrific and beneficial. It opened my mind to expand and think differently. I enjoyed every moment.
Across 27 external participant surveys from our Apollo RCA courses, self-rated knowledge moved from 3 to 8 out of 10.
Before you book
Why FMECA and not FMEA?
FMECA is Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis: everything an FMEA does, plus the structured criticality assessment that catches high consequence modes a Risk Priority Number can bury. On heavy industry assets the criticality step is the one that changes decisions, so we only train and deliver the full FMECA. An analysis without it answers what can fail. It does not answer what matters.
Do we need to buy software?
No. The course teaches the method, then shows you three ways to run it: in Excel with a worksheet you keep, with the free Simplified FMEA Template on this site, or in a commercial suite if your site already has one. Nothing you learn stops working when a licence lapses.
Can AI just write the FMECA for us?
It will write one today, and it will look plausible. Plausible is the danger: without the method you cannot tell a sound analysis from a fluent one, and neither can your auditors. The course teaches the method precisely so your team can put AI to work on the drafting and challenge everything it produces. That is why the AI session closes the course instead of replacing it.
Can I do it online?
Yes. Every course runs live online as well as in the classroom and on site. Online is delivered live with an instructor, not recorded, and you work the same exercises. If you are one engineer rather than a team, this is usually the fastest way in.
Where do public courses run?
In our training room in Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast. If travel does not make sense from where you are, the live online cohort is the same course with the same instructor, and on site delivery brings it to your operation.
Should the whole team come, or just the facilitator?
Both work, and they buy different things. Sending the facilitator builds one capable person. Sending the team builds a shared language, which is what stops the next workshop stalling on definitions. On site delivery is usually the better value if more than four people need it.
Do we need to do RCM as well?
If the goal is a changed maintenance plan rather than a completed analysis, yes. FMECA tells you what can fail and what it costs you. RCM decides which task addresses it. Ask about running the two together.
An FMECA that ends in a register is a workshop. One that ends in a task is a result.
Two days, your own asset, and a method your planners can act on without asking what you meant.