Free FMEA Template (Excel Download)

Download the FMEA template (.xlsx)

No sign-up, no email gate. It opens in Excel, Google Sheets, or LibreOffice Calc. The RPN column is a live formula (Severity times Occurrence times Detection), so it recalculates as soon as you fill in a row, and there is a second tab with the full 1 to 10 scoring reference for each rating.

What is in the template

Three tabs:

FMEA is the working table, one row per potential failure mode, with the standard column set: Item/Function, Potential Failure Mode, Potential Effect(s) of Failure, Severity, Potential Cause(s), Occurrence, Current Design Controls, Detection, RPN, Recommended Action(s), Responsibility and Target Date, Actions Taken, and the resulting S/O/D/RPN after a fix ships. The first row is a filled-in example so you can see the expected format before you start your own.

S-O-D Scale Reference is the 1 to 10 scoring guide for Severity, Occurrence, and Detection, so you are not guessing whether a failure is a 6 or a 7.

Instructions is a one-page how-to.

What each column actually means

Severity (S), 1 to 10. How bad the failure is if it happens. A 9 or 10 means safety or regulatory risk. Rate the effect, not the failure mode itself, a keyway crack and a bearing seizure might come from the same root cause but have very different severities.

Occurrence (O), 1 to 10. How likely the failure is to happen, based on the actual cause you wrote down. This should come from real data (field returns, warranty claims, test failures) when you have it, not a guess.

Detection (D), 1 to 10. How likely your current controls are to catch the failure before it reaches the customer. A 10 means you have no way to detect it at all until it fails in the field, that is the score that should worry you most, regardless of severity.

RPN. Severity times Occurrence times Detection. It is a triage number, not a certification, use it to sort which failure modes get attention first, not as the final word on risk. A single high severity score deserves a look even if the RPN total is moderate.

Where a static template breaks down

A spreadsheet FMEA works fine for a one-time analysis on a stable design. Where it gets painful is revisions: the moment a dimension, material, or process changes, you are back in the sheet manually re-scoring every row that might be affected, and it is easy to miss one.

That is the specific gap ForgePilot's FMEA generator closes: upload a file or describe your design and get a ranked FMEA with RPN scores in seconds, and when the design changes, the follow-up updates the analysis in context instead of starting the sheet over. Same S-O-D methodology, no manual scoring.

If you are doing a one-off analysis or you just need the reference scales, the Excel template above covers it. If you are iterating on a design across revisions, that is where the manual version starts costing real time.