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Carl S. Carlson — Thought Leader

Author of Inside FMEA articles, FMEA Resources page, and multiple books, and a co-host on Speaking of Reliability.


This author's archive lists contributions of articles and episodes.

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The Future of Reliability Engineering

As we celebrate the new year, I am republishing an article I wrote last year, titled “The Future of Reliability Engineering,” as part of the Inside FMEA series. This article applies equally well to FMEA, as you will see.

Sometime in 2023, I will write an article titled “The Future of FMEA.” But, first, I want to hear from readers. Please write me with your ideas on what should be included in the future of FMEA. You can reach me at Carl.Carlson@EffectiveFMEAs.com

Wishing everyone on Accendo Reliability a happy and healthy new year, and best wishes for high reliability and effective FMEAs!

The Future of Reliability Engineering

by Carl S. Carlson

“Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” – William Jennings Bryan

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Evaluating Facilitator Skills

How to Evaluate the Skills of a Facilitator?

Leading is about learning to be a facilitator – Ashif Shaikh

Ask yourself, when teams work very well together, what are the positive characteristics of the team leader? When teams are dysfunctional, and have poor outcomes, what skills of the leader need to be improved?

Let’s talk about facilitators

Giving proper feedback is a great way to help a colleague improve FMEA facilitation skills. Carefully listening to feedback from a colleague is an important way to improve one’s own FMEA facilitation skills. Both are aided by understanding and using facilitation quality objectives. [Read more…]

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Getting to Consensus

Getting to Consensus

Getting to Consensus with the FMEA Team

“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
Martin Luther King

One of the challenges for any team leader is bringing the team together and agreeing on decisions and actions going forward.

Consensus building is the best practice for all of the FMEA team decisions. This means the FMEA team takes the time to understand all sides of an issue and finds a solution or determines a course of action that is supported by all team members. Facilitating is a consensual activity.

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Pugh Analysis and FMEA

Pugh Analysis and FMEA

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are times when an FMEA facilitator has difficulty arriving at consensus with the FMEA team. This sometimes happens when there are two or more competing ideas or solutions and members of the team feel strongly about their personal idea or solution. One tool that can be used to solve this problem is called Pugh Analysis, a type of decision matrix.

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Managing Time

Managing Time

“Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent, and not enough time on what is important.” – Steven Covey

FMEAs take time and cost money. If time is wasted, FMEAs will be unsupported and ineffective.

In this article, I’ll lay out some tips to keep FMEA in-meeting time as short as possible, without reducing the quality of results. Many of these tips are based on lessons learned from doing FMEAs the wrong way. This is not a complete list. I’m sure you have other lessons learned to save time, and would love to hear from you.

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