Failure Is Success For Disaster Detectives

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When things break down, fall apart, or go wrong, business is good for Failure Analysis Associates.

Teams of engineers from the small Palo Alto, Calif., company are called in to analyze product and systems failures for some of the biggest corporations in the country. GM, Exxon, Lockheed, Burroughs, and others have all turned to Failure Analysis when product defects threatened them with legal disaster.

"We've analyzed almost every major railroad accident or airline crash that's occurred in the past five years," says Jerrell Thomas, vice-president and manager of the firm's stress and reliability analysis group. "Recently we've looked into more and more offshore drilling rig collapses." When two indoor skywalks collapsed at the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel in July, the attorney for the hotel's architectural firm called in Failure Analysis engineers within a matter of hours.

In the past, the firm was usually hired to determine the cause of a failure after the case was already in court, but, as in the Hyatt Regency case, "many clients are now seeking our services before litigation proceedings begin," Thomas notes.

Revenues for the $6-million-a-year company are racked up by preventing product failures as well as by finding out what went wrong after one his failed. The company recently completed a design analysis of the Space Shuttle's external fuel tank for its manufacturer, Martin Marietta. "They wanted us to make the tank lighter but not degrade its reliability," Thomas says. "Intermediate-sized companies with smaller in-house staffs also often ask us to review a product or system design."

Fees for Failure Analysis's services "can run into the tens of thousands of dollars" for a major disaster, Thomas says. Smaller problems and prevention consultations are less costly. But whatever the fee, Thomas points out, it's less burdensome than a million-dollar product liability lawsuit.