Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
One of the first things to do when faced with a set of numbers is to plot them. A histogram is often the first choice, maybe a dot plot. Up your data plotting skills and let your data provide a bit more information by using a box plot. [Read more…]
In the first part “Is the HALT a Life Test or not?” we added the test time to the HALT stress set. What does this give us for lifetime evaluation when testing one or two samples? The correct answer is nothing. But if we add knowledge of the lifetime distribution type and a shape parameter (variation), then we can work with its tails [Read more…]
How a construction site reminded me that an effective Reliability Program starts with RCM. When something new is built, the construction crew starts with the foundation. The same thing goes for a Reliability program. [Read more…]
Why do our Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) dictate that equipment is an asset and our employees are liabilities? Don’t our executives always tell us ‘our people are our greatest assets?’ How come our financials don’t support their assertion? [Read more…]
In one of my recent webinars on ‘reliability culture,’ I was asked a really good question. Someone (let’s call him ‘Tim’) asked me:
How do I get the most out of my ‘ad hoc’ reliability team?
Tim had recently created a ‘reliability team’ made up of people from different areas of his organization. These people were smart, qualified, but had non-reliability engineering day jobs. They weren’t qualified reliability engineers. They weren’t idiots. And they couldn’t devote all their time to reliability. [Read more…]
Astro Teller
It is generally known that HALT testing means destroying a product with stepped stresses. Most experts agree that HALT doesn’t’ provide much information about life and the acronym of HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Test) is wrong. [Read more…]
A common practice I’ve seen in organizations is to deal with field failures when they occur. This may occur when the mistaken assumption that no failure will occur due to ‘such an excellent design.”
Ben Franklin may not have been thinking about future product failures, yet his quote:
By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.
implies we need to prepare ourselves and our organization to deal with field failures. Having clear processes to deal with field failures is a best practice. [Read more…]
Storerooms are a critical part of any maintenance and reliability program, but they are often overlooked. When a storeroom is operating at best in class levels, the right parts are available at the right time. The storeroom is only able to achieve this when it its into the maintenance department.
As reliability professionals, we are in the business of estimating or forecasting the reliability performance of our product, equipment, or system. While we use a range of tools to analytically make these estimates, sometimes we do not have sufficient data or information.
One method is to ask another person that has knowledge of the particular technology, use conditions, or whatever is hampering our work. If you ask two people you most like will get two different answers. If you ask 10, 10 different answers.
One way to work with a group of subject matter experts is to conduct a structured communication technique called the Delphi Method. [Read more…]
If you can’t sell all you can produce, then reducing costs is often the only way to improve margins, but that simplistic accounting perspective is not always the case. Cost control is often thought to be key to attaining profitability but it the case of maintenance it can get you into trouble. Cost control can have a big opportunity cost if you don’t take advantage of the opportunities you have. Consider that what you might really want is greater value – more for less, no just less. [Read more…]
As COVID-19 has disrupted life all over the globe, organisations are forced to significantly change and adapt to the ever-changing customer attitudes and preferences resulting from the pandemic.
The competitive playing field and business environment have been reset. It is now back to square one for many businesses. Businesses have to operate like a start-up, big and small. And they have to start at the same time when governments relax their social isolation requirements. [Read more…]
Manufacturing companies are struggling with the persistent and growing problem of finding employees with the skills needed to sustain and grow their businesses. This problem is commonly called the “skills gap.” Experts estimate that this skills gap may leave 2.4 million manufacturing positions unfilled through 2028, with a potential economic impact of $2.5 trillion (Deloitte 2018).
One of the key drivers of this gap is the rapid influx of technology into every aspect of manufacturing. New technology of course, requires new skills. In a 2019 article published by McKinsey, analysts identified six emerging trends in facilities management, each requiring new skills and each offering opportunities for career growth. (Adhikari, 2019) [Read more…]
Are you living in Reactive Mode? Gain independence from your equipment by optimizing maintenance tasks so you can get the Reliability you need from your equipment. [Read more…]
At an early concept meeting discussing the technical strategy for the new product, the engineering teams were at an impasse. The decision matrix balanced out with three distinct options. Product reliability differed slightly with each option yet presented risks just as the considerations of cost, complexity, feature set, and time to market.
The project manager, the leader of the development program, asked a few questions, asked for input from the director of engineering, and selected a path forward.
The team accepted the decision. The project went well. Yet, I’ve often wondered how did she know which option to select. I also learned to trust her judgment on difficult decisions. [Read more…]
In times that promise to be a financial challenge for many corporations, we must make decisions as to where to invest our scarce dollars and where to cut from our current operations. When faced with these decisions, we must be realistic and pragmatic about how short-term decisions impact our long-term goals. Yes, when times are hard, how well positioned will we be when the economy picks up (and keep the faith, it will pick up)? [Read more…]
