Articles

Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.

Integrating Human Factors with Traditional Reliability Techniques

In Part 1 of Beyond the Numbers, I reflected on why Human Factors matter in reliability engineering and how the human element of the system can be overlooked by traditional hardware-focussed approaches.
This article explores how Human Factors principles can be integrated into traditional reliability analyses such as Reliability Block Diagrams (RBDs), Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) and without reinventing the wheel or introducing additional complexity.

The short answer is that we are already doing much of this implicitly. Applying Human Factors principles makes those assumptions explicit and therefore visible, challengeable and open to improvement. [Read more…]

by JD Solomon Leave a Comment

Top Reliability Engineers Make Risk Management Simple for Every Frontline Worker

Think about the greatest risk you have encountered in the past five years. Maybe it was related to physical injury or serious sickness. It could be related to the mental health of a family member. Natural disasters or career changes are obvious ones. In fact, you can probably think of more than one great risk you have recently experienced.

Now, what is the definition of risk? In technical sessions and my workshops, well-educated business professionals struggle with the terminology. It usually takes two to three minutes for someone to arrive at their definition. The sad news is that there are about as many definitions as there are well-educated people in the room.

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Yet Another Confused MTBF Definition

Just when I thought we had experienced every possible MTBF definition confusion, here’s another.

This one is courtesy of the thread concerning the impact on reliability when adding redundancy to a system. [Read more…]

by Semion Gengrinovich Leave a Comment

Reliability Test can be Done in Parallel to Design Validation?

Yes, reliability testing can be done in parallel with design validation (DV). This approach has both advantages and disadvantages, which are important to consider in the context of product development and testing.

[Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Safety Culture and Artificial Intelligence

Guest Post by Bill Pomfret (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Since the 1990s, organisations have attempted to improve safety culture. They have tried top-down approaches, with senior management making statements about how important safety is. They have tried bottom-up hearts and minds programs, encouraging workers to work safely, and stop if a job can’t be done safely. There have been great strides, and examples of success, such as the UK 2012 Olympic development.

However, many safety culture programs stall after some initial improvements. Senior managers have invested in the program. Workers on the frontline want to be safer and healthier. Sometimes the obstacles come from the middle managers and supervisors, who are invested in existing ways of doing things. For a busy manager there just isn’t time to get ahead with improvement programs while they are doing the day-to-day supervision and management tasks.

[Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Equipment Maintenance Strategy 202: Getting into the Details

Maintenance Strategy 202: Develop your equipment maintenance strategy, then develop your equipment maintenance programs

First develop maintenance strategy—what you want to achieve with your equipment maintenance, why it is necessary, and how to do it.

Then turn strategy into the plans to maintain production asset reliability with the equipment maintenance program.

Often maintenance managers and maintenance engineers are asked to develop a maintenance strategy for their plant and equipment. They need to develop a document. In it you explain how you are going to use the least plant and equipment maintenance expenditure and efforts to ensure the necessary production performance from your production plant and equipment.

[Read more…]

by Larry George Leave a Comment

The Field Reliability Applications Award

From ASQ Reliability Review, Vol. 16, No. 3, Oct. 1996. Revised 2002, 2018, and Jan. 4, 2026.

The Apple Computer Reliability Department manager, Wayne Smith, told me (circa 1991), “We make sure Apple doesn’t sell a product that doesn’t work,” (by in-house product tests during design phase). (I worked in Apple’s Service Department.) Testing helps, but real, age-specific reliability is determined in the field, in the hands of customers, in their environments. Companies could benefit from using age-specific, field reliability to eliminate waste, improve customer satisfaction, and reduce uncertainty. The Field Reliability Applications Award is a clone of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award modified to quantify reliability maturity. The field reliability applications evaluation in this article supplements Fred’s podcast on “Reliability Maturity” [Schenkelberg].

[Read more…]

by Miguel Pengel Leave a Comment

Your Warehouse is Either a Goldmine or a Graveyard

It’s 2 AM. Your SAG mill gearbox just failed. The plant is down, losing $95,000 every hour. You call the warehouse: “Do we have a spare?”

That answer could mean the difference between a 4-hour repair and a 4-week nightmare waiting for an emergency shipment from overseas. The frustrating thing is, someone made a decision months or years ago about whether to stock that gearbox. They either got it right, or they didn’t. Tonight you find out which.

This scenario plays out daily across mining and processing operations worldwide, and most organizations don’t know they’ve got it wrong until that phone call comes. They’re either sitting on millions in dusty inventory that’ll never be used, or they’re one failure away from catastrophe. The sweet spot in the middle is surprisingly hard to find. [Read more…]

by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

Do You Ever Need to Revisit an RCM Analysis? Here’s the Truth!

True or False? Is an Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Analysis Ever Really Complete?

In this video, I tackle a common question: Once you’ve completed a Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) analysis, is there any need to revisit it? The answer is False! RCM is a living program that should be reviewed whenever key circumstances change, like operational tempo, the operating environment, or even what’s required from the equipment.

[Read more…]

by Hemant Urdhwareshe Leave a Comment

Introduction to JASP: an Open Source Free Statistical Software

Dear friends, wish you all a very happy 2026! After a long gap, I am happy to release my 104th video! As we all know, statistical analysis software is becoming quite expensive to buy and maintain! On this background, it is good to know that there is a powerful open-source statistical analysis software ‘JASP’ which is completely free! While JASP is free, its capabilities are excellent and can be a good substitute for a commercial software! I thought of sharing some information about this free open-source software JASP! In future, I intend to demonstrate how to use JASP for performing statistical analyses in few more videos. Your feedback is welcome!

[Read more…]

by Ayaz Bayramov Leave a Comment

Even Stand-Up Comedians Understand Statistical Sampling

We were chatting with some coworkers about stand-up comedians, and someone mentioned that even the most popular comedians try out their new material in small venues before doing a big show for a larger audience. They do this to collect feedback and fine-tune their performance before reaching thousands of people across different cities.

My reliability engineering brain immediately reacted: “This means even stand-up comedians understand the importance of sampling.” They perform a small-scale version of their show to understand how the audience reacts. Based on that feedback, they decide whether the show is ready for a wider audience. In other words, they want to estimate the population’s reaction based on a sample. To me, this is a perfect example of statistical sampling.

[Read more…]

by JD Solomon Leave a Comment

How Reliability Engineers Should Address Risk for Rare Events

Rare-event risks make or break any capital project because we manage them poorly. By contrast, traditional project risks are handled well in the engineering and construction industry. Reliability engineers employ systems thinking to address tasks ranging from root cause analysis to forecasting future trends. A few key issues are important for understanding when and how to handle rare events.

Five Years as a Breakpoint for Minor and Major Projects

Project risks are inherent to every major facility and infrastructure project. Five years from engineering through construction is a good breakpoint for the difference between minor and major projects. Project risk modeling is typically performed using probability distributions derived from historical data on cost and schedule.

Seven Types of Rare Events

Rare event categories include Economic, Informational, Physical (key equipment), Human Resource, Reputational, Psychopathic Acts, and Natural Disasters. Another description can be extreme events. The thought process for including them is “externally driven.” Modeling of rare events is performed with a Bernoulli distribution (occurring over the project life cycle or not, on a one-time basis) or a Poisson distribution (occurring over the project life cycle or not, potentially more than once).

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Another Way to Spot Someone Confusing MTBF

In a Q&A forum, the response to a question concerning failure rate and repair times for a redundant system demonstrated yet another person confusing MTBF with something it is not.

The responder to the question mentioned that the reference to repair time implied the need for MTBF as a metric. Then went on to describe MTBF as the duration of repair time, which should not change given a redundant system over a non-redundant system. [Read more…]

by Semion Gengrinovich Leave a Comment

SRE vs. Reliability Engineer

Site Reliability Engineering vs Hardware Reliability Engineering: Distinct Disciplines with Shared Goals

In the world of engineering, reliability is a crucial aspect that spans various domains. Two fields that often get confused due to their similar names are Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and Hardware Reliability Engineering. While both aim to ensure the dependability of systems, they focus on vastly different areas and employ distinct methodologies. Let’s explore the key differences between these two disciplines and delve into the history behind the SRE naming convention.

[Read more…]

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

Statistical Robustness

Why “Good Enough” Assumptions Often Are

Co-authored with Mike Vella

If you’ve spent any time working with real manufacturing, reliability, or field data, you already know an uncomfortable truth:

Most statistical models assume ideal conditions that rarely exist in practice.

Textbooks often begin with assumptions like perfectly normal distributions, clean random samples, and well-behaved processes. Meanwhile, engineers are dealing with skewed cycle times, mixed populations, censored failure data, process shifts, and the occasional mystery outlier that refuses to explain itself.

[Read more…]