Fault tree analysis

Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) is a way to think about what might go wrong with a system or how something might fail. In FTA, we draw a tree-like diagram with different levels of possible mistakes and figure out what could make something go wrong.

Imagine that you have a toy plane. You have a picture of the plane and draw a 'tree' on the plane with arrows. At the top of the tree you might have 'Not enough fuel' or 'Engine fails.' Underneath those are smaller branches with things like 'Not enough gasoline' and 'A broken part.' Underneath those are even smaller branches with things like 'Running out of gas' and 'The wrong part.'

Now, if something goes wrong with your plane, you can look at the fault tree and figure out what might have caused the problem. By going through the levels of the fault tree, you can find the main cause of the problem, and then figure out how to fix it.