Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
In today’s complex product environment, becoming more and more electronic, do the designers and manufacturers really understand what IS Reliability ??
It is NOT simply following standards to test in RD to focus only on Design Robustness as there is too much risk in prediction confidence, it only deals with the ‘intrinsic’ failure period and rarely has sufficient Test Strength to stimulate failures. [Read more…]
Attribute inspection is one of the most widespread and difficult-to-control measurement methods in manufacturing. Whether inspecting machined surfaces for cosmetic defects, checking weld quality, reviewing molded parts, evaluating assembly completeness, or using go/no-go gauges, many operations depend on human inspectors to make subjective judgments. [Read more…]
There is a direct connection between the microstructure health of your equipment parts and your operational and business success
There are key concepts and practices that an organization needs to use if they want optimal asset health from their plant and equipment. The greatest successes come when operating and safety risks are eliminated at their root causes. The Plant Wellness Way EAM methodology focuses on getting lasting asset health so world class operating performance is normal in your company day-after-day. Its processes and analysis tools create a system-of-reliability that gets exceptional asset health and delivers the greatest ROI from each operating asset throughout its service life.
Risk is the total losses suffered when any asset’s components may fail. The causes of failure are the environmental and operating stresses that affect a component’s microstructure. This means that world class reliability is the effective, complete remove of the causes of failure, also known as risks, from your operations. [Read more…]
Is your project ready for operations when you want to start up? Can you commission and start up with ease and expect to reach full and steady production quickly? Or is your experience with project start ups more chaotic?
Conceptually, entropy is a scientific measure that represents that natural state of everything – chaos. The more chaotic things are, the more entropy they have. We tend to prefer things orderly and predictable. To achieve that we add energy, but without it, we will have chaos. If start ups after a capital project are chaotic, it means you have missed something. Think of it as not having enough energy. That energy is fore-thought and preparation. With it, your project is ready for operations.
I get it, we all love the “easy” button. Whether it’s ordering groceries for delivery today, household items for delivery tomorrow, or a ride to the airport via a tap on your phone, we’ve gotten used to convenience and simplicity when it comes to solving problems.
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In this video, I dive into the concept of Failure Effects and why they’re important to the Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) process. A Failure Effect tells the story of what would happen if we did nothing to predict or prevent each Failure Mode, allowing us to properly assess the consequences and formulate the right maintenance strategies. I break down the essential components of writing a Failure Effect, including:
Understanding this zero-based approach is key, even though it can feel counter-intuitive to RCM Working Group members who are used to managing equipment proactively. That’s why an experienced RCM Facilitator is essential to guide the process. I also share an example of a Failure Effect in the video—feel free to pause and read through it.
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I searched the Internet for “Why Use Weibull Reliability?” and got 196 hits “similar sites omitted”. Some hits looked like they were generated by Chat GPT. None showed data. None told how to test or use Weibull reliability estimates. Many sell Weibull software. All require lifetime data.
Assuming a continuous, parametric distribution such as Weibull conveniently extrapolates limited, censored lifetimes to estimate MTBF, even though MTBF may be far in the future. Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weibull_distribution lists many uses for Weibull distributions. A client had me use Weibull to model durations of covered calls!
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Dear friends, we are happy to release this 101th technical video on system durability estimation! The first part of the video describes the quiz. Viewers are expected to try to solve it on their own before watching the second part of the video where we have illustrated the solution using Excel.
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Defects slow you down, cost you money, and wreak havoc on efficiency. It’s time to change that! In this video, George Williams breaks down Defect Elimination. Defect Elimination is a building block in the Operational Reliability domain, part of the Maintenance and Reliability Best Practices Framework.
⚙️ Identify defects early
⚙️ Take swift action to remove them
⚙️ Improve product quality and plant capacity
Stop reacting. Start eliminating. Watch now and take control of your operation’s reliability! Want to implement Defect Elimination in your operation? Contact us today! Let’s work together to improve your plant capacity and efficiency: www.reliabilityx.com/contact
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Newton’s 3rd Law and Systems Thinking are two of the most important concepts every engineer needs to understand deeply. I hear you saying, “Come on, Ayaz, which engineer does not know about Newton’s 3rd Law?”
My response? Quite a lot.
I am not talking about memorizing the formula and applying it in a calculation. I am talking about truly understanding its philosophy. It is a philosophy that explains the nature of interrelated, complex systems. There is no absolute win in this world. We live in a complex reality where everything, literally everything, is connected.
Do you remember the concept of the Butterfly Effect? It is the idea that a small change in one place, like a butterfly flapping its wings in the Savanna, can eventually cause a tornado somewhere else. It illustrates that a change in one part of a system inevitably causes a change in another part. Good engineering is to be aware of these impacts and manage them.
Engineering works the same way. You push on one parameter, and another one reacts.
In the world of reliability and maintainability, we have a concept called RAM (Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability) analysis. It fits perfectly into the systems thinking mindset because it forces us to find a reasonable balance between competing demands.
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The idea of anything worth doing is worth measuring is a persistent one. The persistent problem is that measuring performance becomes much more difficult as we move into the realms of strategic plans, management systems, and reliability programs. In many cases, choosing performance indicators and measures is less about choosing new ones and more about realignment and refinement of old ones. However, in some cases, it’s simply better to retool. These are a few considerations for getting started. [Read more…]
One of the benefits of reliability engineering is that failure happens.
Everything made, manufactured, or assembled will fail at some point. It is our desire to have items last long enough that keep working for us. Since failures happen, our work includes dealing with failures.
Achieving 99% reliability versus 99.9999% reliability (1 part per million failure rate) represents a massive leap in quality and performance, especially for electromechanical devices in the automotive and aviation industries. The efforts required to reach these levels of reliability differ significantly:
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How do you work-out the right life-cycle maintenance strategies? Does one strategy apply throughout an asset’s life? What influences the choices and decisions as to what maintenance to do and when it should be done? How much money and resources do you expend in the maintenance of an asset? To keep the concepts behind these important questions on maintenance strategy selection simple they are applied to a sheet of paper.
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In the last 2 years my team was involved in automating risk management part for investment decision making, vendor accreditation, market risk, tender process, treasury management, credit risk and project management. That’s 8 different software packages selected from dozens of possible options. In this article I wanted to share some important takeaways from our risk management automation.
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