This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.
This Website Uses Cookies
By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Learn More
This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.
Subscribe
  • Sign In
  • Create Account
  • Sign Out
  • My Account
  • Home
  • The Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Digital Edition
    • Archives
    • How To Guide
    • Industry News
    • Subscribe
  • Web Exclusives
    • Apps
    • Blogs
    • NDT Exclusives
    • Quality Exclusives
    • Vision & Sensors
  • New Products
  • Channels
    • Management
    • Measurement
    • NDT
    • Quality 101
    • Software
    • Test & Inspection
    • Vision & Sensors
  • Markets
    • Aerospace
    • Automotive
    • Electronics
    • Energy
    • Green Manufacturing
    • Medical
    • Plastics
  • More
    • Leadership 100 Survey
    • Plant of the Year
    • Professional of the Year
    • Job Board
    • White Papers
    • Quality Store
    • Software Downloads
    • eCards
    • Product Spotlights
    • Industry Links
    • Featured Products
    • Sponsor Insights
    • Market Research
  • Multimedia
    • eNewsletter
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
    • Webinars
    • Showcases
    • Image Galleries
    • Interactive Spotlights
  • Events
    • IMTS
    • Event Calendar
    • Quality Show
  • InfoCenters
    • Improving Manufacturing Quality
    • Manage Quality, Risk & Compliance
    • Materials Testing & Analysis
    • Modern Quality Control with SPC
  • Directories
    • Buyers Guide
    • NDT Sourcebook
    • V&S Sourcebook
    • Take a Tour
  • Contact
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
Home » Blogs » Quality Blog » Exploding Headphones and FMEA
Banoo Behboodi is Sphera’s director of industry solutions. Behboodi has extensive experience in implementation of EH&S solutions with emphasis on operational risk management, including risk assessment, management of change, incident management, audits, occupational safety, etc. She has led many successful global solution implementations in the oil and gas, chemical, pharma/bio-pharma, medical devices and discrete manufacturing industries.
Test & Inspection / Management / Quality Exclusives

Exploding Headphones and FMEA

April 6, 2017
Banoo Behboodi
2 Comments
KEYWORDS Effect analysis / Fault Tree Analysis / fmea
Reprints

Recently, an Australian woman suffered burns to her face after her battery-operated headphones exploded during a flight from Beijing to Melbourne. On that day, the health and safety of all the passengers on board that flight was compromised because of one malfunctioning headphone battery. With the flaming device thrown on the ground and the smell of burning rubber permeating the cabin, flight attendants had to douse the fire quickly. One can only imagine how scary the situation must have been for the passengers and crew.

We think the responsibility of the safe operation of such gadgets lies with the manufacturers, and this is where time-tested, structured and systematic risk assessments such as Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, or FMEA, and Fault Tree Analysis can help. FMEAs are designed to show manufacturers where product quality and reliability could suffer, and allows them to fix these errors early in the product development life cycle. Likewise, Fault Tree Analysis starts with an undesired outcome as the root of a logic tree, documents the events that could lead to that outcome and helps identify the most consequential causes for the event or failure.

Strategic organizations take a proactive risk-based approach to quality improvement, and perform such risk assessments by engaging cross-functional and multidisciplinary teams. The teams collectively inventory all potential failure modes, causes and effects, identify the severity of the effects and likelihood of the causes to calculate overall risk for a failure, and build controls to reduce the risk to an acceptable level.

The other popular risk management terms used in the industry are “scenario analysis” and “event tracking.” Prior to this headphone incident, there have been incidents of exploding mobile phones on airplanes and electrical system problems stemming from lithium-ion batteries in newly introduced airplanes. It behooves battery manufacturers to make a list of all environments where their batteries could be used—hot, cold, high and low pressure, high and low altitude, subterranean, underwater, humid, dry, various battery charge levels, and so on—and learn from incidents affecting others in their industry.

This is no easy task, but it can be simplified using a system that can help standardize a quality risk assessment workflow through a systematic progression from capturing of failure modes to the assessment of risk and identification of controls at various product development stages.

Shared knowledge libraries can help disseminate historical knowledge and lessons learned to the teams responsible for product quality. Critical control lists identified as part of the FMEA can be traced throughout product lifecycle—from general hazard analysis to design and manufacturing—to ensure that the product will operate safely and reliably. Stage gate review and approval steps embedded within the product life cycle can ensure proper application of the risk assessment procedures and effectiveness of identified controls before a product moves on to the next stages of development.

We recommend that manufacturers of devices, where quality issues could result in safety issues for the consumer, proactively consider compliance with standards such as ISO 13485, an internationally agreed-upon standard that sets out the requirements for a quality management system specific to the medical devices industry. The new version of ISO 13485 places greater emphasis on risk management and risk-based decision-making. The focus is on risks associated with the safety and performance of medical devices and includes risk assessment coverage across suppliers, requiring adequate controls such as written agreements. Given the proximity of lithium ion battery operated devices with patients and general population during everyday use, it will not be surprising if regulators start mandating risk assessments from battery manufacturers should more such incidents start making headlines in the news media.

Often, teams are under pressure to release products sooner than later. However, releasing products that have not anticipated quality- and safety-related issues through a comprehensive risk assessment and corrective action process, at various stages of product life cycle, could lead to dangerous consequences.

Are these assessments capable of preventing all such incidents? Probably not, but a solid FMEA or Fault Tree Analysis will reduce the likelihood of their occurrence. Product recalls, damage to reputation and liability costs are a few of the many consequences of lower-quality products.

For more information, visit spherasolutions.com/operational-risk/quality-risk/.

Blog Topics

Shifting the Paradigm

Jim's Gems

Steve Adams: Operational Strategies

Recent Comments

oferte de munca uk

Thanks for this information. I like your post...

https://tranzactive.com

Acknowledges for penmanship such a worthy column, I...

Managers often rely on patterns and intuition to...

Banoo Behboodi is Sphera’s director of industry solutions. Behboodi has extensive experience in implementation of EH&S solutions with emphasis on operational risk management, including risk assessment, management of change, incident management, audits, occupational safety, etc. She has led many successful global solution implementations in the oil and gas, chemical, pharma/bio-pharma, medical devices and discrete manufacturing industries.
You must login or register in order to post a comment.

Report Abusive Comment

Subscribe For Free!
  • Print & Digital Edition Subscriptions
  • eNewsletters
  • Online Registration
  • Subscription Customer Service
  • Mobile Help

More Videos

Sponsored Content

Sponsored Content is a special paid section where industry companies provide high quality, objective, non-commercial content around topics of interest to the Quality audience. All Sponsored Content is supplied by the advertising company. Interested in participating in our Sponsored Content section? Contact your local rep.

Close
Cncmachine__r0c0gpjprl__
Sponsored By
Renishaw Inc.

Renishaw and Hartford combine to deliver intelligent “smart factory” solutions

In the face of global skills shortages and rapidly emerging Industry 4.0 trends, Taiwanese CNC machine manufacturer Hartford undertook to develop an innovative, easier-to-use human machine interface (HMI) for its CNC machines. At the same time the company strived to ensure process measurement and inspection at its CNC machine manufacturing operations could keep pace with ever-improving product quality goals.

Popular Stories

JimGems

Positive Reinforcement

Ralco Industries

Quality 4.0: A Trend within a Trend

Quality Management

What is Quality Management and Why Does it Matter?

Renishaw Logo

Survival of the fittest – the process control imperative

ETQ

Top 3 Processes to Automate to Improve Quality Management

BuyersGuide


Quality Magazine how to directory guide video

Events

March 14, 2019

Why Excel is Failing Your Tolerance Stacks

This webinar will demonstrate a 1D, 2D and 3D stack analysis on a product, and explain why 1D and 2D stacks are missing the mark for tolerance analysis
March 20, 2019

Vision Guided Robots: 2D vs 3D Technology

This session will review 2D technology for inspection and guidance, and highlight how 3D vision is being used for recognition of randomly presented parts in bin picking applications.
View All Submit An Event

Poll

Topics to Talk About

What topics would you like to see Quality cover more?
View Results Poll Archive

Products

Quality Brain Teasers: Real World Challenges to Build Your Manufacturing Skills (ebook)

Quality Brain Teasers: Real World Challenges to Build Your Manufacturing Skills (ebook)

Assessments and Training in the following areas...

See More Products

SoftwareDownloads

Quality Magazine

Quality February 2019

2019 February

Check out the February 2019 edition of Quality: Quality Leadership 100 survey results, air gaging, Quality 4.0, automation and much more!
View More Subscribe
  • Resources
    • Market Research
    • Custom Content & Marketing Services
    • List Rental
    • Partners
    • Manufacturing Group
    • Polls
    • Privacy Policy
    • Survey and Sample
  • Want More
    • Connect

Copyright ©2019. All Rights Reserved BNP Media.

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing