fouttypes

Fouttypes is a term used in Dutch-language technical literature to describe categories of faults or errors that can occur in a system, process, or product. The concept provides a structured way to classify and analyze failures, guiding debugging, testing, and safety assessments.

Classification schemes for fouttypes vary by domain, but commonly distinguish by origin: human errors (slips, lapses, mistakes), hardware faults (permanent faults, transient faults, intermittent faults), software faults (bugs arising from design, implementation, or runtime problems), environmental faults (electrical noise, temperature extremes, mechanical vibration), and process faults (deviations from procedures or workflows). Some classifications add data-related faults (invalid formats, missing or duplicate data) in information systems.

Additionally, fouttypes can be categorized by impact and detectability, such as safety-critical versus non-critical, latent (hidden) versus active faults, or by recoverability (repairable versus non-repairable). The exact taxonomy used depends on the field—reliability engineering, software quality assurance, or data governance each adopt tailored schemes.

In practice, identifying fouttypes supports risk assessment, fault tree analysis, root-cause analysis, and test planning. It helps teams prioritize remediation efforts and document failure modes for safety cases or quality records. Related concepts include fault tree analysis, failure mode and effects analysis, and reliability engineering.