
First Steps with Data
Abstract
Chris and Fred discuss what is the first thing with you do when someone gives you lots of information. What do you do?
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Author of Reliability in Emerging Technology, multiple books, co-host on Speaking of Reliability, and speaker in the Accendo Reliability Webinar Series.
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by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

Chris and Fred discuss what is the first thing with you do when someone gives you lots of information. What do you do?
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by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

I was recently asked by a product design engineer why their organization struggles with reliability even though they have a very ‘robust’ design process that seemingly has lots of different ‘good’ reliability engineering activities embedded in it. And when I say ‘good’ reliability engineering activities, I mean activities that have (in the past) shown to have a really good impact on reliability.
When I looked at some of this engineer’s processes as summarized by a ‘process flow chart,’ the reason his organization struggled with making reliable products was quite obvious.
The process was so complex that it became the ‘product.’
by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

Chris and Fred discuss your approach for estimating the reliability of a new product, with new technology, manufactured in a new facility? … wow!
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by Christopher Jackson 2 Comments

Chris and Fred discuss what it means to establish an Ongoing Reliability Test (ORT) … or is it an accelerated test? … or the MTTF?
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Sounds simple … right? We simply test faster! Great! But what does this get us? Many organizations are faced with a dilemma when it comes to testing to MEASURE reliability. If we test an amazing new product in ‘at use’ conditions, it might take many years before it will fail. This is time we simply don’t have when it comes to product development. So, how do we test faster? One of the more obvious answers is to increase the stress. Turn the temperature up. Increase the vibration. Use more voltage. But how do we get this right? How can we know that (for example) one week of accelerated testing is equivalent to 10 years of actual use? This webinar will help introduce you to the idea of Accelerated Life Testing, or ALT, to help you and your organization make reliability testing a reality.
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Chris and Fred discuss the changing ideas of leadership … and how people lament newer generations and their approaches to (and expectations of) leadership. There are challenges … so what does this mean?
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by Christopher Jackson 1 Comment

What does this title mean? Chris and Fred discuss how some vendors make ‘startling’ claims regarding reliability from some small amounts of test data. So where does this 60th percentile some of us hear from time to time come from?
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by Christopher Jackson 2 Comments

Chris and Fred discuss whether you want to lay blame (i.e. sue) or improve reliability? Don’t be confused … accountability is important. But that doesn’t replace everyone ‘owning’ the end result.
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Chris and Fred discuss what (if anything) we can learn from advertised warranty or reliability specifications from vendors.
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Redundancy has continually proven not always to be redundant. Whether the Fukushima nuclear power plant or United Airlines Flight 232, additional components or subsystems that are supposed to take over when others have failed don’t always work. Why is that? There are quite a few reasons … many of which we already know about. But time and time again, otherwise, smart people choose to ignore what we know about how to REALLY make things redundant in order to save costs, save thinking, or otherwise confuse efforts with outcomes. In this webinar, we will look at how redundancy is described in textbooks … and how it can go wrong in the real world.
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Chris and Fred discuss how we communicate reliability to our customers. And they haven’t completed university courses in reliability engineering …
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Chris and Fred discuss the difference between ‘confidence,’ ‘tolerance’ and ‘prediction’ intervals. Is there any point in understanding the difference between these concepts? … or is it something only statisticians find useful?
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Whether new to reliability or a veteran, you have probably heard about the Weibull distribution. It has almost mythical status amongst those who conduct reliability data analysis … or in other words – turning a jumble of dots (data points) into information that actually means something. So why do we ‘worship’ the Weibull distribution? What is so special about it? Whether you have been doing this for a long time or five minutes, you will get something out of this webinar that looks at one of the most popular tools for reliability analysis.
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by Christopher Jackson 4 Comments

Chris and Fred discuss the pointlessness of the MTBF. This comes from a listener who reached out to complain about how lots of industries enforce the MTBF … but why?
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Chris and Fred discuss about what happens when we ‘defer’ maintenance … or do it later … or perhaps never. When is it OK to do this?
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