A fusion of FMEA and FRAM: An improved risk assessment method under cooperative relationships

As technology advances and system design becomes complex, the importance of risk assessment is emphasized. Risk assessment methods such as Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM), although widely accepted, do not provide a comprehensive risk analysis strategy when used individually in complex scenarios. In addition, during the risk assessment process, experts can develop relationships that affect the assessment results, and cooperative relationships, as one of them, have not been fully investigated. To address the above problems, this study proposes a risk assessment method combining the FMEA and FRAM methods based on the cooperative relationships to overcome the limitations of the FMEA and FRAM methods used individually and provide new perspectives on exploring cooperative relationships. First, potential risks are analyzed using the improved FMEA method to identify critical Failure Modes (FMs), and the internal operating mechanisms of the identified FMs are analyzed using the improved FRAM method. Furthermore, a case study of breast cancer radiotherapy is used to illustrate the effectiveness and superiority of the improved method, and sensitive analysis and further discussion are conducted.