Draft the PFMEA for a new process from its steps
Give Claude the process steps, the part's characteristics and your PFMEA template. It drafts every line: what each step must achieve, how it can fail, the effects and causes, the controls you have, and suggested ratings for your team to agree.
Safe versionQualityWhen you need it
Set it up5 steps
Open the Claude desktop app and sign in with the Claude account you use for work. On a personal Free, Pro or Max plan, chats can be used for training unless you switch off SettingsPrivacyHelp improve Claude.
No account yet? Ask your manager.
Where things are in Claude
- CustomizeConnectors In Claude's left sidebar: connect your email and files.
- /schedule Type it in a new Cowork task to run a prompt on a schedule.
- Scheduled In Claude's left sidebar: what runs, to pause or change it.
- Once for the whole company: your Microsoft admin approves Claude's Microsoft 365 connector and turns on its write tools, so Claude can save drafts and files. If connecting asks for an admin's approval, this is still to do: send them this step.
- Make a PFMEA folder inside your Engineering folder, with your PFMEA template (including its rating scales) and one or two past PFMEAs you trust.
- In Cowork, connect your Engineering folder in OneDrive or SharePoint (the one synced to this computer).
- For a new process, add to that folder the process steps in order, a list of the part's characteristics by number and name (a bore, a thread, a weld) without values, and the control plan without its tolerance column. No drawings or CAD files. Open Cowork, paste the prompt and name them.
- Go through the draft with your team, and agree every rating and action in your PFMEA meeting as you always do. Claude drafts; the team decides.
Set this up on your computer: the Claude desktop app runs it.
The prompt
- Taken out by a company rule: Draft a PFMEA for the new process in the files named below, in the PFMEA folder inside my Engineering folder.Draft a PFMEA for the new process in the files named below, in the PFMEA folder inside my Engineering folder. Do not open drawings, CAD or design files, and never write a dimension, a tolerance or a value from one. Name characteristics by their number and name only, and write [SEE DRAWING: characteristic] where a line needs a value. If a file still shows a dimension or a tolerance, ignore it and never repeat it.safe version
- Taken out by a company rule: 1. Read the process steps (operation number, what is done, machine or station), the part's characteristics from the drawing, and the control plan if there is one. Use the columns, rating scales and ranking method of our PFMEA template in that folder, with the past PFMEAs there as examples.1. Read the process steps (operation number, what is done, machine or station), the list of the part's characteristics, and the control plan if there is one. Use the columns, rating scales and ranking method of our PFMEA template in that folder, with the past PFMEAs there as examples.safe version
- 2. For each step, write what it must achieve, then the ways it can fail. For each failure: its effect on the next step, on our customer and on the end user; the likely causes (people, machine, material, method, measurement, environment); and the prevention and detection controls we already have, from the files.
- 3. Suggest the severity, occurrence and detection ratings from the template's scales, and give the reason for each in a few words. If the template has no scales, leave every rating as [TO FILL] for the team. Mark all ratings as a draft.
- 4. For the failures that rank highest by the template's method, and every failure on a characteristic marked special or critical, suggest an action with [TO FILL: owner and date].
- 5. Look in the past PFMEAs and any lessons-learned entries in my Engineering folder for failures we had before on similar steps, and add them, each named by its source.
- 6. List what you could not judge from the files.
- Write it as a new sheet in the PFMEA folder. Never invent a control we do not have, and never lower a rating to make a line look better.
- Company rule: never put technical drawings into this task. If an email or file contains them, skip that part and tell me.company rule
Kept out of AI
- Technical drawingsKept out
- Safe version. Works from the process steps and a list of characteristics by number and name, never the drawing. Where a line needs a dimension or tolerance, it says [SEE DRAWING].
What you get
A first PFMEA in your template's columns, with the ratings marked as a draft, an action suggested for the highest risks, and the failures you had before on similar steps.
Learn how
Get this workflow for your team
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FirstPrompt's workflow library adapts parts of Anthropic's knowledge-work-plugins (Apache-2.0), rewritten by FirstPrompt. Source and licence