Development of a failure identification concept by using continuously improved product use cases

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr.-Ing. Nadine Schlüter
• Subject Area: Engineering Design, Machine Elements, Product Development
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 502859764

An inadequate consideration of failures that can occur from the interaction between a technical product and its environment in the use phase can have critical consequences. This was made clear by the well-known Tesla car accident, in which the car's "autopilot" system was unable to distinguish between the background of the bright sky and the white side of the truck, which led to the death of the driver after the violent impact. This clearly shows that failures resulting from the product-environment interaction not only affect the quality and reliability of technical products, but in the worst case can also lead to injuries or even death. In order to avoid failures preventively, various methods of failure analysis are applied in product development (e.g. FMEA, FTA or Ishikawa), but none of these methods take the interaction between the product and its environment in the use phase sufficiently and systematically into account. Even the scenario technique, which is oriented towards the use phase, focuses on strategic product planning or requirements determination and not on the identification of potential failures between the product and its environment. Therefore it is necessary to develop an FailureIdentification Concept by means of continuously improved product use scenarios (FailureID-Pro), whereby potential failures, which can result from the product-environment interaction, are to be identified early (in product development) on the basis of scenarios and models. The development of the FehlerID-Pro is to be based on findings andresults from the DFG research projects "KAUSAL" and "FusLA". An analysis of national and international research projects, including publications and projects from 2004 to 2020, shows that such a concept is a desideratum in science and industry. In order toimplement the project systematically and successively, several work packages are planned. First, potential scenarios will be compared with real data from complaints in order to determine similarities and differences and to optimize the scenarios used for failure identification. In the second step, a tool will be created to identify potential failures in the interaction between product systems and the environment, taking into account the findings from the use phase (complaints). Subsequently, the FailureID-Pro is to be developed and validated with a focus on potential failures in the interrelationship of product and environment in the use phase. FehlerID-Pro should helpto avoid failures preventively, so that besides the quality improvement of technical products the safety of their users can be guaranteed.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants