Triage Principles for Manufacturing Quality Management Logs
Triage quality logs by immediate containment risk and throughput impact to clear shift backlogs and isolate critical assembly line defects.
Risk Priority Number
Meaning
A numerical score used in Failure Mode and Effects Analysis to rank potential design or process failures based on their severity and occurrence alongside detection probability. Calculating the risk priority number helps engineering teams identify which failure modes pose the greatest threat to product reliability or safety. This prioritization ensures that corrective actions are applied to the most serious risks first.
Score Calculation
The number is the product of three distinct ratings on a scale of one to ten, which measure severity, probability of occurrence, and likelihood of detection. Multiplying these factors yields a score between one and one thousand. A high rating in any category often triggers an review regardless of the total score because a catastrophic failure must always be prevented.
This systematic approach ensures that high-risk areas are never ignored.
Mitigation Priority
Engineers use the scores to allocate design and manufacturing resources to areas with the highest risk ratings. This strategy ensures that corrective actions, such as adding redundant systems or automated inspections, target the most dangerous failure modes first. Lower scores are monitored but require fewer resources.
Quality Verification
Recalculating the score after implementing corrective actions verifies the effectiveness of the changes made to the design or process. This ongoing reassessment confirms that the changes successfully reduced the severity, occurrence, or detection risk. This continuous loop maintains process safety.