Recently a colleague sent me a published copy of the first CRE exam. Scanning through the document suggests that a few things have changed and many have not changed at all. I often comment my enjoyment of the reliability engineering profession, as it doesn’t change too fast and even I can keep up. [Read more…]
Archives for May 2012
RBD and Design Process
A reliability block diagram (RBD) for a product that has no redundancy or complex use profile is often very simple. A series system (reliability wise) implies that any one part or element of the product that fails the entire product fails. One might ask if an RBD is even necessary. [Read more…]
Top Tips for Probability Analysis
This is provided courtesy of Amanda at
Egerton Consulting Ltd
Visit our website at www.egertonconsulting.co.uk
<They have a great newsletter and worth subscribing. Fred> [Read more…]
Why HALT is not HALT
An excellent short white paper by Craig Hillman that is worth reading. It underscores why I claim HALT is the second-worst four-letter acronym in our profession. See the paper at http://www.dfrsolutions.com/uploads/white-papers/Why_HALT_Is_Not_HALT.pdf
How to Calculate Warranty Failures
Let’s say we have a product that most often fails for one major component. Let’s say a fan (it could be anything, and while I don’t have anything against fans, it’s easy to picture).
Ok, this fan has a data sheet with the classic reliability claim of 50,000 hours MTBF. For those that know about my disdain for MTBF (www.nomtbf.com) rest assured I’m not going to get into it here. The basic approach for estimating the number of failure during any [Read more…]
5 Books for a Professional Reliability Engineer
A part of the preparation for the ASQ CRE is experience and education. These, in my simple way of thinking, means applying what you have learned to solve problems and provide value. Reliability engineering is about two questions: [Read more…]