AFD involves the following steps in its process:

1. Formulate or invert the problem. Rather than guessing at possible causes of the failure (how did it happen?), invert the problem to state how to make it happen. Formulate a problem statement by stating the problem in the following way: It is necessary to always produce the failure mode of interest under the conditions that cause the failure. Begin with identifying the conditions leading to the failure. Identify the scenario or events involved in the failure and localize the failure.
2. Search for solutions or methods to produce the failure. Now that the problem has been changed from possible things that can happen to things that need to be produced or happen consistently, the thought process shifts to a inventive method of finding the mechanisms or means of production. Function analysis can be useful to identify a series of functions or actions involved in the failure scenario. This helps to understand the problem as well as help formulate the failure mechanism. By inverting the problem, it is shifted to an issue of invention - how can something be done or how can something be made to occur. TRIZ is a useful technique to identify inventive approaches to making the failure happen. This step should lead to identifying all of the standard ways of creating the failure.
3. Verify that resources are available to cause the failures. There are seven potential categories of resources: substances, field effects, space available, time, object structure, system functions, and other data on the system. For each of the potential solutions, identify if the required resources are available to support the solution (failure).