Articles

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

The Four Functions

There are four functions related to life distributions of importance to reliability engineering.

Nearly all textbooks on reliability either introduce or use these functions. Likewise, nearly every calculation related to reliability statistics also uses at least one of functions.

Suppose we produced 100 units of a product and tracked them all till failure over time.

Eventually, all of them would fail. And, unlike the Parson’s One Hoss Shay the products and their components would not all fail at the same time.

One way to track the failures over time is to use a simple histogram.

By plotting the number of failures each month, for example, we would [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

Basic Statistics

Understanding the math is critical not only for the exam, but it is also important for your ability to function as a reliability professional.

Most of us did not enjoy our undergraduate statistics course. It was just another course to endure as part of being in an engineering or science track.

The basic concepts and approaches to working with data are fundamental for some many situations. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Engineering Management

As 12%* of the CRE exam, this is a major section, yet not a very difficult one. There are three basic areas:

strategic management
reliability program management
ethics, safety, and reliability

If you’ve ever needed to secure funding or samples for a reliability test or had to respond to customer field returns, then you probably already understand the value of reliability.

In some businesses, product reliability is critical to the product’s success. Some businesses strive to be the leading ‘reliable’ producer in the market. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Getting Started Preparing for the CRE Exam

I’ve learned a lot in my career and have attempted to help others to the best of my ability.

Teaching is fun.

It is also enjoyable to know a little of what I’ve learned from others may continue to be passed along.

The ASQ CRE certification is a milestone in a reliability engineer’s career. It is not an end nor a beginning, just a milestone to mark the achievement.

The CRE BOK encompasses a broad range of concepts and tools.

Passing the exam marks the person as having mastered the body of knowledge as laid out in the ASQ CRE BOK.