Some risk tools are quick pictures. They help you see the shape of a problem before you dig in.
The risk matrix
A risk matrix is a grid. One axis is how bad (severity or impact). The other is how likely. Each risk goes in a cell. The corner where both are high is where you act first.
ASQ's risk-management material uses likelihood and impact this way to set risk levels and decide what's acceptable.
| Unlikely | Possible | Likely | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Severe | Medium | High | High |
| Moderate | Low | Medium | High |
| Minor | Low | Low | Medium |
How a bot uses it
Ask a bot to place every risk for a new job on the grid. It's fast, and the picture is easy to review at a glance. A person can drag a cell up or down in seconds.
It's a good first pass before an FMEA. Things in the top corner get a full FMEA row. Things in the bottom corner might not need one.
SWOT
SWOT lists four things:
- Strengths. What you do well.
- Weaknesses. Where you're thin.
- Opportunities. What's out there you could use.
- Threats. What's out there that could hurt you.
It's more of a business planning tool than an engineering one. ASQ lists it among risk-management methods.
A bot can draft a SWOT quickly for, say, a decision to add a new routine. Strength: it saves an hour a day. Weakness: it depends on one connector. Opportunity: it could feed the weekly report too. Threat: a change in the connector breaks it silently.
Where these fall short
Both tools are coarse. A matrix with three rows hides big differences inside a cell. SWOT doesn't rank anything. The AIAG-VDA FMEA handbook mentions risk matrices as a visual aid, not as the way to decide on actions.
For a bot, the extra risk is that the picture looks finished. A neat grid feels authoritative even when every placement is a guess. Mark the guesses as guesses. Use the quick tools to decide where to look, then use FMEA and the 80 percent line for the real work.
Back to Engineering tools for bots.