Legal aspects of product liability and FMEA

The development trends and times are getting harder and harder. In order to counteract the increasing quality and reliability problems different quality methods were integrated in the product design cycle. However, over the time the legal aspects have changed as well and the product liability playing a more and more important role in the development of new products. This paper deals with the fundamentals of product liability and the interactions and influences on the quality methods. The FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects and Analysis) will be used to demonstrate these effects.