FTA (Fault Tree Analysis) or FMEA (Failure mode and effects analysis): how they are different from each other?

Question

I have decided to work on risk analysis for my MA thesis, but I am stuck with choosing the theoretical framework for that. I am not studying MBA or other Management fields, and that makes my job hard.

I have found that to date, there have been two major attempts for applying risk management techniques to my field of study, both of which developing a Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS) based on PMBOK. I wanted to move forward in this are, so I thought assessing risks and finding out how much each one of them could be influential in the companies could be good. The methodology is confusing me, however.

I guess FMEA, FTA, and FFTA are helpful for this purpose, but I do not know the reason behind these models.I am not much familiar with advanced mathematics because I major in humanities, but I believe I can handle it if it the calculations are at high school level for I have studied Mathematics at high school.

Answer 1

FTA will identify combinations of conditions and component failures which will lead to a single defined adverse effect. FMEA on the other hand considers all single component failures in turn and identifies the range of their effects on the system

Answer 2

Fault tree is more like hardware / software faults that may occur.

However failure modes and effects analysis looks at the implementation effects of those faults or design errors in systems.

I suggest to take a look at these two methodologies.

About using these methodologies in corporate risk management; the program risks are not solely technical in nature. It's also organizational, schedule related, money related. Many risk resources identify certain risks for project managers to consider.

In general, risk management is a good topic to study, requiring mostly simple math.