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A risk analysis needs a vocabulary before it needs a rating.
A risk analysis needs a vocabulary before it needs a rating. If two engineers write "surface quality" and mean different things, the numbers underneath are worthless - they cannot be compared and they cannot be carried into the next project. For a piezoelectric force sensor that meant naming every physical quantity capable of disturbing the product first, in a fixed order and with a fixed name.
We wrote out 51 disturbance variables, grouped into 19 material, 11 surface, 9 geometry and 12 sensor-assembly variables. Those 51 columns have been the header of every matrix in the analysis ever since; only the rows change. The top matrix was filled in first: 13 product characteristics against 51 variables, all weighted equally, with a mark wherever a variable can move a characteristic. Of 663 possible cells, 222 are set.
Reading the matrix by individual variable says more than the four group totals. The strongest column of all is particulate contamination during assembly, at 11 of 13 characteristics. Nine of the 51 variables are contamination entries, and between them they carry 68 of the 222 marks - 31 per cent of the whole matrix. No manufacturing tolerance comes close. Nine other variables stay at zero, among them temperature and preload. And dividing each group total by the number of variables in it reverses the usual reading: 5.7 for the sensor assembly, 5.5 for the surface, 4.9 for the geometry and only 2.6 for the material. The material group is not heavier, it is merely longer.
A consistent disturbance vocabulary of 51 entries, filled in at two product levels. At the top the 13 product characteristics; one level down the core element with three design elements - the lower and the upper crystal layer with 28 affected variables each, and the gold-germanium layer with 21. Plus the identically prepared, still empty matrices for the seven bought-in parts, the eighteen process steps and the inner element.
The interesting part is the comparison between the two levels, and it is only possible because the columns are identical. At the top the sensor assembly leads, ahead of surface, material and geometry. One level down, at the crystal stack, the order is exactly reversed: material 29, surface 22, sensor assembly 17, geometry 9. Where the crystal is the product, the material is the risk. That also settles where each variable has to be controlled - and not one of them in two places at once.
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