What is a Criticality Path?

A criticality path is effectively a Failure Path, which is composed of all the individual Failure Concepts that begin from a failure cause and lead to an End Effect. A good way to think of this is to think of the rows of a FMEA/FMECA report or to think of a response path that is generated by MADE.

In the context of Criticality Path Rules a criticality path can be composed of all the criticality parameters that are entered on any element in the Failure Response Path.

In all the below rules a Criticality Path is composed of the following aspects: Fault, Failure Condition, Functional Failure Mode (Pair and Component), Functional Failure Mode (End Effects).

The following are not calculated in a Criticality Path: Failure Cause (has no properties), Failure Mechanism (has no properties), Symptom (has no properties), Functional Failure Mode (Next Effect) - excluded to reduce the complexity of Criticality Path complexity.

Criticality Path Rules:

Name	Definition
Earliest in the Path (edited values)	This rule will retrieve the criticality parameter from the earliest concept in the path, if the parameter is not a user entered value (e.g. it is still default) this will pick the next earliest parameter in the path. If no parameters are edited the default value will be used.
Latest in the Path (edited values)	This rule will retrieve the criticality parameter from the latest concept in the path, if the parameter is not a user entered value (e.g. it is still default) this will pick the next latest parameter in the path. If no parameters are edited the default value will be used.
Highest in the Path (edited values)	This rule will retrieve only edited parameters in a path and take the maximum of these values. If no parameters are edited the default value will be used.
Lowest in the Path (edited values)	This rule will retrieve only edited parameters in a path and take the minimum of these values. If no parameters are edited the default value will be used.
Average in the Path (edited values)	This rule will retrieve only edited parameters in a path and take the average of these values. If no parameters are edited the default values will be used.
Earliest in the Path (edited and default values)	This rule will retrieve the criticality parameter from the earliest concept in the path, regardless of whether this is a user edited or default value.
Latest in the Path (edited and default values)	This rule will retrieve the criticality parameter from the latest concept in the path, regardless of whether this is a user edited or default value.