This standard covers Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and variants including Damage Modes and Effects Analysis (DMEA) and Failure Modes Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA).

Although this military standard was cancelled by MIL-STD-1629A change note 3 on 4th August 1998, it is still widely used as a reference when performing the variants of Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA).

The process defined for FMEA addresses:

• planning;
• worksheet formats;
• ground rules and assumptions;
• coding system;
• contributing information;
• indenture level (including hardware and functional approaches);
• failure definition;
• identification of failure modes, effects (local, higher and system level), detection methods, and corrective actions;
• identification of corrective design; and
• severity classification.