Articles

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

Introduction to the Quality Triangle

Priorities and Balance

Have you ever worked on a project with no deadlines, unlimited resources, and boundless scope? Probably not.

Quality Triangle-1 — The Quality Triangle

You may have worked under the guidelines of a quality triangle, also known as a project management triangle, iron triangle, or project triangle.

Why is that? Why the limits to our ability to create a product or improve a system?

First, the world we work and live within has limits. We have only so much time for work, only the available resources, and limited knowledge. We do our best with what we have to work with at the time.

Second, as I once was told while working on an accelerated test design, ‘if there isn’t a deadline, you’ll happily tinker with the plan and get the testing done.’ My boss was right of course.

The set of constraints shape our projects and products. By understanding the set of constraints, specifically how they frame decisions, then we can complete complex projects. [Read more…]

by Les Warrington 2 Comments

Making Your Reliability Data Analysis Count

Ensuring Reliability Data Analysis Leads to Positive Action

Convince, don’t confuse! Justify, don’t exaggerate!

Project managers want to deliver their product on time and on schedule. Design engineers want to believe that they have got it right. But your analysis, test results and field data suggest that there might be a problem. What do you do?

The key words here are “suggest” and “might be”. How should you present your evidence and analysis such that it doesn’t exaggerate with certainty, or confuse with statistics? How should you ensure that your conclusions lead to positive action? [Read more…]

by Dennis Craggs 5 Comments

Telematics Data Analytics Overview

Product design, development, and reliability engineers need to verify that their product meets specifications, which include dimensional requirements, functional definitions, and life testing. How are the requirements validated?

Telematics data is collected to show how a vehicle has been operated. Fleets and retail data are stored on servers for engineering analysis. This data can be used to set new requirements or validate older requirements.

[Read more…]

by Kevin Stewart Leave a Comment

RCA Templates Again

RCA Templates Can Be Used

In my last article, RCA Templates Use or not?, I discussed templates and suggested that while beneficial for many things, they may not provide as much value for those doing RCA’s. This is because for any specific effect, the variability in the cause tree is significant and difficult to predict. This doesn’t mean that there are no options to utilize templates to help speed up the process, but perhaps not in the way that people might be used to. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

The Need to Improve the Reliability Narrative

Little Compromises and Future Costs

In a recent Seth Godin blog, Counting beans he talks about the eventual costs of little compromises. The immediate benefit may be celebration worthy, yet

But overlooked are the unknown costs over time, the erosion in brand, the loss in quality, the subtraction from something that took years to add up.

This certainly applies to reliability as well. Deferring maintenance just one more month, addressing one more software bug can be done after shipping, and similar small shifts erode reliability of your system. [Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette Leave a Comment

That Won’t Work Here! How to Overcome the Top 5 Excuses

One of the most challenging aspects of being a consultant is addressing the musings of those who have accepted defeat.

With a smile of course; and friendly reassurance that you have in fact worked with companies who were worse off and with some training, confidence and a sound business plan they were able to turn things around to a point where people actually enjoyed coming to work. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

See How Easily You Can Plan a Successful Shutdown

Using the Critical Path to Guarantee a Successful Shutdown

Shutdown, Turnaround, Outage are all the same thing. An extended planned downtime event, in which a tremendous amount of resources are utilized to ensure the site will be able to achieve its business goals. Whether the shutdown involves overhauls, CAPEX or a combination, the successful completion of the shutdown depends heavily on the planning and execution of it.

Shutdowns are resource intensive and often under compressed timelines. This unique situation requires a different approach to planning, scheduling and executing work, than the typically Maintenance Planning & Scheduling process. [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

How to Make Smarter Decisions

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

Did we get it all wrong? Wow! This could break our business model. Let me explain:

We developed Certified Enterprise Risk Manager® and all of our risk IP based on a simple fact. We live in VUCA time (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity). We based our business business model on providing:

Risk-based, problem-solving.
Risk-based, decision-making.™

So, what’s the problem? [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini 1 Comment

Separation and Segregation of Dangerous Goods

Many of the chemicals we deal with each day are dangerous and need to be handled correctly and safely. Safe use of dangerous goods includes recognising when situations can arise where the consequence of a failure or error will result in danger to life, property or the environment. One of the methods used to minimise risk when dealing with dangerous goods is by separation and segregation.

Keywords: Hazard, storage facility, control, emergency plan, MSDS, material safety data [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Using Reliability Goals to Set Requirements

Customers of your product would like the particular one they have to work. To work over time.

If a product meets the customer’s expectation by working as long or longer than they expected it to do so, then they may consider your product reliable.

We use reliability goals to discuss the customer’s reliability expectations. It is the establishment of requirements that converts the customer expectations to development and production obligations. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

The Systems Desire

My career path in systems engineering. I don’t mean my professional engineering career exactly. My systems engineering portfolio I would say started at about the age of nine if I had to pick a point in time. At nine I made a small hydro-electric power plant in the stream behind my house so I could have light in the woods. I could have taken a purely electrical approach, battery, wires, bulb, or a chemistry approach, matches, wood, oxygen, or a mechanical approach (actually how do you make light mechanically? Sparks??) anyway… But I took a systems approach. [Read more…]

by Kevin Stewart Leave a Comment

RCA Templates to Use or Not?

Definition of template

What is a template? Merriam-Webster has two definitions that seem to apply to RCA work. They are: 1) a gauge, pattern, or mold (such as a thin plate or board) used as a guide to the form of a piece being made; 2) something that establishes or serves as a pattern. For our discussion let’s use the second. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Interviewing for Reliability Position with Senior Managers

Preparing for an Interview with Senior Managers for a Reliability Engineering Position

Organizations around the world are recognizing the value of reliability engineering. Or, they are realizing that creating a durable product that delights the customer is good for business.

Another contributor to the interest in reliable products is the news of recalls. One recall not only distrupts the normal course of business, it may alter the future of the company. It may cause the collapse of the organization. Some do better than others, yet a major, in the news, recall is something to avoid. Creating a reliable product helps.

So you made it past the initial round of interview and have been called back to talk to the senior folks. As with any job interview, being prepared helps you present your best self. Understanding the business drivers motivating an interest in reliablity is essential for your preperation. This is not how to prepare an accelerated test plan type question, rather it is about how the results of an ALT will provide relevant value to the organization. [Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette Leave a Comment

Things I Learned by 50!

It’s Friday so I thought I would go back in the archives and find something light and meaningful. Enjoy 🙂

Old is relative.

I can remember thinking my dad was old when he turned 50. While I might look old to my kids I don’t feel old. When I look in the mirror each morning I still see the person I saw yesterday and he doesn’t look any older than he did the day before. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

What Everybody Ought to Know About Work Order Closeout

How Capturing the Right Information Will Improve Your Job Plans, Increase Reliability and Improve Your Profitability

One of the most important, but often the least effective parts of the Maintenance Planning & Scheduling process, is the work order close out step. Here critical data is supposed to be captured and used to improve the job plan, identify future work and improve reliability. All of these add up to improve the profitability of the organization. [Read more…]