An Automatic Failure Mode And Effect Analysis Technique For Processes Defined In The Little-Jil Process Definition Language

Many processes are safety critical and therefore could benefit from proactive safety analysis techniques that attempt to identify weaknesses of such processes before they are put into use. In this paper, we propose an approach that automatically derives Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) information from processes modeled in the Little-JIL process definition language. Typically FMEA information is created manually by skilled experts, an approach that is usually considered to be time-consuming, error-prone, and tedious when applied to complex processes. Although great care must be taken in creating an accurate process definition, with our approach this definition can then be used to create FMEA representations for a wide range of potential failures. In addition, our approach provides a complementary Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), thereby supporting two of the most widely used safety analysis techniques.