The process of identifying maintenance of significant items and classifying them with respect to malfunction on safety, enviornmental, operational, and economic consequences. The possible failure mode of an item is identified and an appropriate maintenance policy is assigned to counter it. Support methods include failure mode, effect, and criticality analysis (FMECA), fault tree analysis (FTA), risk analysis, and hazardous operations (HAZOP) analysis.

Tip excerpted from The Professional's Guide To Maintenance And Reliability