Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
Reliability engineering has a shared language, but not always a shared understanding. Terms are often used loosely or interchangeably, particularly in cross-functional teams.
It would obviously be impractical to cover every term here. From experience however, a few distinctions often cause confusion.
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This article is adapted from Chapter 8 of my book, Measuring Manufacturing Effectiveness.
The book explores how manufacturing organizations define and use performance metrics, and how those definitions influence operational decisions, improvement efforts, and management behavior. While the chapters form a connected framework, each is written to address a specific aspect of manufacturing effectiveness and can be read independently.
Performance loss is often described in overly simple terms—the equipment is running slower than it should. While speed is certainly part of the story, this narrow view hides a much broader set of losses that affect output, flow, and stability.
Chapter 8 expands the discussion of performance loss beyond basic speed shortfalls. It examines how interruptions, minor stops, micro-downtime, variability, and operating practices contribute to lost performance—even when equipment appears to be running continuously.
By broadening how performance loss is defined and observed, this chapter aims to improve how organizations diagnose problems and select effective improvement actions.
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Dear friends, I am happy to release my 106th technical video. In this video, I have explained how to use the open source JASP software to create and analyse Full Factorial Experiment. I have illustrated this with an application example of how to maximize fatigue strength of a crankshaft. Crankshaft is a critical component used in internal combustion engines.
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We gather and report loads of data nearly every day.
Is your data “good data”? Or does it fall into the “bad data” category?
Let’s define the difference between good and bad data. Good data is accurate, timely, and useful. Bad data is not. It may be time to look at each set of data you are collecting or reviewing and judge if it’s good or not. Then set plans in motion to minimize the presence of bad data in your organization. [Read more…]
In 2001, Whirlpool Corporation, the world’s leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances, voluntarily recalled about 1,800,000 Whirlpool, KitchenAid, and Kenmore brand “over the range” microwave-hood combinations.
Working in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Whirlpool recalled the units because they had received seven complaints of fire and did not want to risk customer injury or property damage. The CPSC helps protect the general public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from consumer products under the agency’s jurisdiction. More often than not, manufacturers of such products work with the CPSC to voluntarily recall products from the market that may pose a risk to individuals.
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One man’s meat is another man’s poison” as coined over 2000 years ago by the Roman poet Lucretius still rings true today. In these days of recycling, it’s akin to “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. But what about toxicity?
Everything is toxic! It’s just a matter of concentration and tolerance. Just look at oxygen and water, both are essential to human life, but both can kill if there’s too much or too little of either. Oscar Wilde, amongst others, is attributed with saying, “Everything in moderation, including moderation” providing a modern-day qualification to Socrates’ original of ‘nothing in excess”. But moderation or excess are matters of opinion.
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There are only two ways to get high system reliability: meeting outstanding task quality performance standards so excellence is done everywhere, and by building parallel arrangements where the failure of one has no impact on system performance. Both are done in a PWW EAM System-of-Reliability
Equipment can be configured in series or in parallel arrangements. A series arrangement is when one item or task connects sequentially to the next. It takes only one item to fail in a series arrangement and the whole system will fail. Exceptionally reliable individual equipment is needed to experience a high-reliability system with a series arrangement.
Parallel arrangements are when each item is arranged as a companion, one duplicates another. In this circumstance, exceptionally reliable systems can be formed even if individual equipment has poor reliability.
A system is formed when equipment is combined to do a duty. For example, when a pump, coupling, and electric motor are connected they form a series system used to move liquid through pipes from one point to another.
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5-Why is it popular because it’s simple—and that’s exactly where it can fall short.
Teams ask “why” five times, land on a familiar answer, document it, and move on.
The exercise feels efficient, but the thinking is often shallow.
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In this unit, we delve into the second and third steps of the Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) process: identifying Functional Failures and writing Failure Modes. It’s vital to distinguish between Failure Effects and the actual causes of failures. A Failure Mode, often termed a failure cause, specifically pinpoints what specifically causes a Functional Failure. Proper training is essential, as accurately identified Failure Modes are the cornerstone of developing effective failure management strategies. We will introduce the four criteria for including Failure Modes in an RCM analysis. This session uses practical examples, such as bearing failures, to demonstrate how well-defined Failure Modes lead to actionable solutions like vibration analysis or enhanced training programs. Learn to balance the level of detail in your documentation to prevent oversimplification and avoid analysis paralysis, ensuring your RCM process is comprehensive and effective.
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Understanding asset value is one of the most fundamental questions in facility, infrastructure, and asset management. Yet it’s also one of the most misunderstood because different disciplines approach value from different angles. “Asset value” is not a single number—it’s a collection of perspectives formed by accounting, insurance, engineering, and operations. Getting clear on those perspectives is the first step toward making better decisions.
Before covering the many ways to express asset value, it helps to define three basic concepts that support most of the others.
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Reliability engineering rarely happens in isolation. More often, it sits within a project environment shaped by cost, schedule, scope and competing priorities.
In many projects, reliability engineering can be seen primarily as a quantitative exercise that is applied once evidence is needed to validate a design. By then, the opportunity to influence architecture, technology choices, or support concepts may be limited.
The greatest impact of reliability engineering often comes much earlier, through structured questioning and risk-informed thinking. Helping teams recognise that reliability engineering influences design and decision-making throughout the project, not just when evidence is required, is part of the reliability engineer’s contribution within a project environment.
This one made me scratch my head and wonder. Did I read this right?
A reader sent me an excerpt of a document found on Vicor’s site.
“Reliability is quantified as MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) for repairable product and MTTF (Mean Time To Failure) for non-repairable product. A correct understanding of MTBF is important. A power supply with an MTBF of 40,000 hours does not mean that the power supply should last for an average of 40,000 hours. According to the theory behind the statistics of confidence intervals, the statistical average becomes the true average as the number of samples increase. An MTBF of 40,000 hours, or 1 year for 1 module, becomes 40,000/2 for two modules and 40,000/4 for four modules…”
How safe is the modern roller coaster? Media attention to amusement park injuries and fatalities have led to concerns about passenger safety and potential brain injuries resulting from faster, more complex rides that may cause greater stress on the rider.
West European ice slides, popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, are the earliest ancestors of the present-day roller coaster. Ice blocks were fashioned into sleds, and sand created friction to slow down the sled at the end of the ride. As popularity increased, wooden sleds were built with iron runners to increase the speed and intensity of the ride.
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Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure you do things differently from everyone else.
Sara Blakely – Founder of Spanx
Robots are coming is a common refrain in Tech Futures. Robots and smart machines are doing a lot of our work and will do a lot more over the next few years. Take a look below:
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Across every mature RCA program we’ve seen, one pattern is unmistakable: leaders who consistently close the loop win.
Not sponsors who attend kickoffs. Not managers who ask for status updates. Leaders who personally ensure that corrective actions are implemented with the same rigor used to identify root causes have RCA programs that thrive.
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