Let’s say that someone has decided they want to get better at something. Perhaps they want to lose weight. Perhaps they want to learn a language. Perhaps they want to learn to play the guitar.

The next thing they might do is find an expert who can help them. A personal trainer. A linguist. A music teacher. They then go and find their expert. But … in the very first meeting, they tell their expert:

‘Just so you know, I am NOT going to (1) stop eating hamburgers, (2) do homework or (3) practice playing.’ [Read more…]

In one of my recent webinars on ‘reliability culture,’ I was asked a really good question. Someone (let’s call him ‘Tim’) asked me:

How do I get the most out of my ‘ad hoc’ reliability team?

Tim had recently created a ‘reliability team’ made up of people from different areas of his organization. These people were smart, qualified, but had non-reliability engineering day jobs. They weren’t qualified reliability engineers. They weren’t idiots. And they couldn’t devote all their time to reliability. [Read more…]

I often talk to engineers who have just been told that they are now a ‘reliability guy or girl’ for their organization. The CEO or perhaps a director decides that reliability is now important, so a group of poor unfortunates are hastily and collectively anointed as ‘the’ reliability program. Is this familiar?

Sometimes this works. Sometimes these rebranded ‘reliability guys and girls’ create amazing programs that [Read more…]

Reliability engineering has an image problem. It is seen as an imbugerance that destroys budget, schedule and fun. People sometimes think reliability engineering is simply statistics, data analysis and other mind-numbing stuff. Reliability purgatory. Which brings us to the first reason you need to do reliability engineering.

#1 – Reliability engineering is not reliability purgatory. Reliability purgatory is all effort and no outcomes. Reliability happens at the point of decision. Design decisions. Manufacturing decisions. Maintenance decisions. True reliability engineering helps you make better decisions – which often comes down to organized judgment and not statistics.

[Read more…]

A recent student of mine was an engineer for a rail corporation. Let’s call her Liz. Liz kept asking me ‘what do I need to put in a contract’ to make sure my suppliers take reliability seriously? She kept asking this over, and over, until I got the penny to drop. Liz eventually realized that she was the one who had to take it seriously. [Read more…]

Remember how we were told as kids in school that we had to study hard to get into college or university? There was that ongoing, implied threat that not getting into university or college would ruin our career. Or at least, be very bad.

It turns out it may not be that bad after all. For example, over half of Apple’s employees don’t have 4-year degrees. Why? [Read more…]