Fault tree analysis (FTA) is used by a wide assortment of organizations to analyze failures for complex systems and assets.
FTA is especially useful for determining the cause of a failure and the root causes to prevent them in the future.
Additionally, fault tree analysis can help prioritize issues so that teams can make better decisions on improvements.
The Fault Tree technique can be used to analyze the software developing process. A Fault Tree is a logic diagram that displays the interrelationships between a potential critical event (top event) in a system and the causes for this event.
The goal is to find critical events concerning fault introduction and to relate those events to the developing process. In this way we can find appropriate actions that will reduce the probabilities of these events and the subsequent probability of the top event.
Experts in this area believe organizations can be most successful with an FTA approach that employs three components.
Component one is the FTA diagram, a flowchart that provides a visual framework of events proceeding equipment breakdowns. Organizations draw a series of logical deductions starting with the asset failure and then trace back to the root cause.
Component two is events, which refers to the causes of failure or failure itself. Events are either input (lead to other occurrences) or output (result from other circumstances).
Component three is about the logic gates, which use an “and/or” sequence to connect related events.
Two input events that lead to an output event are connected using an “and” gate, while single input events that lead to an output event connect using an “or” gate.
Want to learn more? Tonex offers Fault Tree Analysis Training, a 2-day course that teaches participants how fault tree analysis (FTA) is used in system engineering and analysis practices such as reliability, maintainability and safety.
FTA is a common method for safety assessments and probabilistic risk assessments (PRAs). A PRA is a systematic approach to risk and reliability analysis, which estimates risk, the likelihood of failure, and the magnitude of the consequences.
For more information, questions, comments, contact us.