on Product Reliability

It’s no longer an option to be the strong household name brand in an industry.

You have to expand your technology capabilities to stay in the market.

There are product lines that have had a consistent core technology for long periods of time.

Companies that are leaders in these are “the experts” and they hold maximum market share because the customers know what brand to buy if they want the best.

But if there is a sudden change in the technology, then that “bulletproof” brand name can be tarnished in one product cycle.

What if the core technology suddenly changes to include new electronics or software controls or something we would never have imagined.

The competitors are about to gain market share based on feature add, sometimes “jumped into the future” feature add; The iPad, Tesla electric vehicles, Tesla assisted autonomous driving, smartphone, Solid State memory, automotive electronic fuel injection, jet engines, desktop printer – this is a “Side Swipe”. [Read more…]

Many companies achieve great success based on their ability to create, invent, and develop a technology.

If this is the dominant focus of their product development programs they will maintain a high market share by continuing to be cutting edge.

These industries and technologies are highly competitive with respect to new features and functionality for a period of time, but the growth of any specific technology slows as it matures.

When this occurs, customers begin to put more weight on cost point and reliability when deciding which model or brand to purchase.

[Read more…]

Bulletproof!

It is a very conscious decision to have reliability be a part of your products brand.

What conversations with marketing and the leadership have occurred for your next product development program?

Was there a conscious decision to place your product in a certain range of reliability?

Too many times it’s a discussion that happens as the product is reaching it’s Beta stage of development, “Let’s measure its reliability and see where it’s at and if we need to improve it”.

You can measure reliability that late in the game but you have little opportunity to change it.  So what if it is far lower than the product target market expects?

What if it is far overbuilt and millions of dollars of cost savings were missed in this first generation of the design?

It happens this way more than not. [Read more…]

I see many organizations that feel a great sense of victory when they solve a current issue that has been plaguing their product.  

It may be a field issue that took a product that was performing flawlessly to a steeply increasing failure rate “out of nowhere”.  

Customers are angry, management is angry, everyone is angry and afraid.  It seems to go on forever and the end is unknown.  Then just as suddenly as the issue arose, a solution is found that puts the universe back in order.  

The team celebrates, goes back to the day to day tasks that keep the machine running and there is a sense of calm.  But the unspoken nervousness of waiting for the next issue to pop up is there.  

There is nothing to do but just wait.  A new one will arise, maybe tomorrow, maybe in six months, maybe next year.  

Mid-maturity vs High-maturity culture

“But that is the way it is and there isn’t much that can be done about it”. 

That is the mindset of a Mid-maturity reliability culture.  A High-maturity reliability culture doesn’t have to just sit and wait for the next “gremlin strike”.  

The reason is that not only do they know what caused the last issue,  they also know why they currently aren’t having any issues.  It is a subtle but big difference.  

The High-maturity reliability culture has in place an ongoing program that studies the variabilities that can occur in their product manufacturing and usage.  This program uses methods such as specialized testing and analysis that supports mitigations in design, manufacturing, and product usage.  

Now the organization isn’t just not having issues, they know why they aren’t having issues!

But in reality, it’s just pitfalls we fall into because we simply aren’t willing to study the road up ahead.

Related:

5 Steps to Building a Reliability Culture (article)

Purpose of a Reliability Program (article)

How to Assess Your Reliability Program (article)