Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
During the interview, I turned down a job when I learned the hiring manager expected me, a potential new reliability engineer on the team, to only conduct tests. Creating and assembling a reliable product or service takes more than testing. [Read more…]
Understanding context is important for making smart risk-based decisions and solving tough problems.
Understanding context is important to ensure that you are solving the right problem correctly. Understanding context helps you understand the root cause of the problem and the key stakeholders. It helps you develop effective solutions. It helps you define your assumptions and biases. [Read more…]
Ever heard of Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)? It is a wonderful activity that can do amazing things for … what? It depends on what you might have heard, or what you are used to. Why? Because there are a number of different FMEAs that do different things for … different things. A Design FMEA can help us prevent really basic, simple flaws in a new product. A Process FMEA can help us prevent really basic, simple flaws in a new process. What process? Any process … but typically manufacturing. Many people who have heard of FMEAs usually associate them with either design or processes. And then there are System and Software FMEAs. Want to get an overview of which FMEAs do what and when you would use one instead of the other? Join us for this webinar.
In the past two months, I’ve received a few questions concerning why I recommend avoiding using MTBF or similar metrics. I’m also moving the articles I and others wrote on the topic from NoMTBF.com to Accendo Reliability. So, the topic of MTBF has been on my mind.
This morning’s email included a question on why I was so against using MTBF. This event is my answer. [Read more…]
Risk is now incorporated into many if not all ISO quality and reliability standards. ISO 31000 is the go to international standard for risk management and risk based, decision making. ISO 31000 can be used by all types of organizations, regardless of their size, industry, or sector. ISO 31000 provides a standardized and systematic approach to risk management. This helps organizations to identify, assess, and manage risks in a consistent and effective manner.
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First thing … the MTBF is not a reliability metric (there are other webinars that explain why!) But there are many times when (for reasons good and bad) we need to test something to see how often it fails. This can help us work out how many spare parts we need, how many maintainers and technicians we need to employ, and lots of other really useful (typically logistic) considerations. We sometimes also need to be able to work out if a product meets an MTBF requirement. But when we do … we need to take into all sorts of statistical considerations like producer’s risk, consumer’s risk, and discrimination ratio. Shouldn’t the requirement be the requirement? If you want to learn more about MTBF testing and how it might (or might not) work … then join us for this webinar.
When first charged with designing, conducting, and analyzing an ALT, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as accelerated life testing. Along with the assigned task was the expectation that I would learn what was necessary to design, conduct, and analyze a suitable ALT. I like those kinds of tasks – one where I have to learn to succeed. [Read more…]
Covid taught all of us the importance of managing suppliers, especially those from China and Asia. Risk became the top supply management concern over supplier delivery, quality, and cost. For example, just in time deliveries became just in case. Many common sense ideas of lean changed. Incoming, in process, and final inventories rose. Overall costs increased. Risk became the overarching concern for managing suppliers. [Read more…]
Everyone ‘knows’ why we do reliability engineering … right? Customer experience. Organization reputation. Reduced warranty claims 10 years from now. But these are boring reasons that really don’t motivate me to take reliability seriously now. Why should I invest so much time into an activity where that benefits the ‘company’ or the ‘customer’ in the future but won’t make an immediate difference where my boss will give me a ‘gold star’ on my next performance appraisal? Besides, no one person is responsible for reliability, so any effort I invest in reliability will be ‘lost in the noise’ anyway. And of course, reliability will increase budget and schedule today. Right?
There is a simple trick that organizations who do ‘reliability’ well use. They understand that reliability engineering solves problems starting today. That means there are fewer crises during production (costing time and money), a focus on the VITAL FEW things that matter (not the TRIVIAL THOUSANDS that leads to over-engineering) and no 300 slide PowerPoint presentations where we need to discuss reliability ‘stuff’ every week. No more ‘build-test-fix’ treadmill. Come and listen if you want to hear the 10 reasons to do reliability engineering well that reduce production timelines, save budget, eliminate the ‘overwhelm’ and otherwise motivate everyone to bake reliability into the ‘first design.’
Over the past few months, we’re received a few questions related to accelerated life testing. There are bound to be more questions as ALT can be confusing to plan, conduct, or interpret. Let’s get together and address your questions related to ALT. [Read more…]
Creating a plan and generating information is part of reliability engineering, yet it’s not enough. To be a successful engineer, one must communicate well. This means we need to write, discuss, and present well. We are often called upon to examine failures and recommend solutions, examine a dataset and explain the finding, or conduct an experiment and detail the results. [Read more…]
What is supportability? Is it working out how many spare parts you will need (and when)? No. Is it working out how many maintainers or technicians you ill need too keep your system working? Still no. What about working out what tools these maintainers or technicians need? No again. But many people think that this is what ‘supportability’ is. ‘Supportability’ is actual a characteristic of your product or system. Is the ‘ability’ for it to be ‘supported.’ And this can mean different things in different scenarios. It is also not a ‘number.’ If you have two comparable systems, but one of them needs fewer spare parts, is easier to maintain, needs fewer tools, has lots of sensors that gives plenty of warning for maintenance, and so on … then it might be more supportable. But the main thing you need to ‘think about’ regarding supportability is that because it is a characteristic of a product or system … it has to be baked INTO the design. Want to learn more about how to do this? Join us for this webinar.
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A key element of reliability engineering is doing the right thing at the right time. When running an experiment or test, conducting an assessment, or performing an analysis, it is essential that the method we use fits the situation. Being busy does not add value; getting meaningful results does. [Read more…]
Everyone has heard of the ‘bell curve.’ Sports show hosts, teachers, scientists and a bunch of other people routinely use the term ‘bell curve’ to describe uncertainty. But do you know where it comes from? It is not just a ‘pretty shape’ that seems to work, It comes from a really cool physical phenomena that we find everywhere. So the ‘bell curve’ naturally aligns with how our primitive human brain often tries to characterize or visualize uncertainty. The other really cool thing about the bell curve (and lots of other curves that look like bells) is that if we find it in our reliability data, it automatically tells us where to look in order to improve reliability. If you want a basic introduction to one of the most common statistical concepts with NO EQUATIONS … this is the webinar for you!
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This is an overview of the six steps to achieve high reliability from Carl and Fred’s book. Creating and executing a reliability plan that assists the team in designing, manufacturing, and supporting meeting reliability objectives take effort. Let’s discuss the details of that effort such that you focus on the critical steps. [Read more…]