Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Chris discusses ‘rules’ – rules we need to apply and rules we must bend. Rules can range from traditional practices and procedures through to the laws of nature. But we as reliability engineers need to know which of these rules we must adhere to, and which are our duty to try and bend. Want to learn more? Listen to this podcast!
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Chris discusses ‘reliability security blankets.’ You know what security blankets are – the things that parents offer young children to make them feel safe and comfortable. Not because these blankets actually offer warmth, comfort or safety – but rather because the children associate feelings of warmth and safety with that object because it is ‘always there’ when they are at home or go to be. A reliability security blanket does the same thing – it calms the leaders, managers, bosses, and directors of an organization. But – that is it! There is no reliability to be found. Want to learn more? Listen to this podcast!
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Having a reliability target for your product is excellent. But how does that help all the little design teams, who make their own decisions on all the different parts of your system?
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Chris discusses reliability engineering report writing (yuck). Pretty boring topic. But not nearly as boring as some of the reliability engineering reports. I will (try to) make this as entertaining a podcast as possible. And I will explain the golden rule of engineering report writing – make it a ‘reverse thriller.’ Keen to learn more? Then please listen!
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Chris talks about what ‘profitability’ is … and it is not ‘profit today.’ Why is this distinction important? Because focusing on profitability takes care of all of your future ‘profits today.’ But it does not work the other way around. There are plenty of contemporary examples about how we can get this wrong – think Boeing and the ‘mess’ it is currently in. Want to learn more? Please listen here!
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As we make things to be more and more reliable, it gets harder and harder to make them fail in reliability tests. On the one hand – that’s great. On the other hand – that sucks if we want to use testing to help measure reliability. So if we are focused on measuring reliability through testing, we need to make our product or system fail in test conditions (without making it less reliable) but make sure these test conditions can somehow be translated back to how customers are going to use it. This is where accelerated testing comes in. [Read more…]
Chris and Fred discuss Markov Chain modeling. Where we model transitioning from one state to another – which is often used for availability. How and when do I use it? Does it work in today’s reliability applications? Listen here to learn more.
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Chris and Fred discuss the Reliability Management Tutorial that Chris and Carl Carlson (another Accendo contributor) will be delivering at the Reliability and Maintainability Symposium (RAMS) in Palm Springs later this month. This tutorial can contribute to you getting a certificate as well if you are attending. Like to learn more? Listen here.
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Chris and Fred discuss data analysis … specifically the first question we ask before we help someone with their data analysis project. Chris always asks – what is the decision that this data analysis will support? And Fred always asks – where did this data come from? The reason these questions are important is that you need to know what information you need before you construct an analysis to get that information. And you need to be confident in the results. A single data set can potentially create multiple information sets. And this depends on how you construct the analysis. Which based on the decision. Listen to this podcast if you would like to learn more.
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Chris and Fred discuss reliability leadership. What is reliability leadership? Writing a book? Putting together a few slides? The first thing to know is that there is a difference between a reliability manager and a reliability leader. A reliability manager will tend to oversee practices and processes that others have identified or put together. Reliability leaders come up with the rationale, the motivation, the linking with business outcomes and everything else that creates or sustains organizational change. You can have the ‘best’ reliability engineers – but without reliability leadership, you won’t make reliable products. Want to learn more? Listen to this podcast.
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Chris and Fred discuss the ‘gist’ of reliability. Fred was recently asked to be part of a panel to a number ‘hardware startups’ and was asked … what is the ‘gist’ of reliability? We try and answer that question as simply as possible in this podcast. The thing is … reliability will happen. Ignoring it doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Reliability is an outcome of your decisions and the design choices you make. The harder you work on it, the closer reliability will be to what you expect. So do you want to learn what the ‘gist’ of reliability is? Well, listen to this podcast.
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Chris and Fred discuss the concept of an ‘outlier.’ Depending on the definition, an outlier is something that is different, non-representative or somehow separate from the ‘main body’ of something. We often use the term ‘outlier’ when it comes to statistical analysis of something – specifically when we see something that is beyond what we expect to see. So what do we do with ‘outliers’ … particularly when it comes to reliability analysis? It may be tempting to exclude them (particularly if it makes the outcome of your analysis ‘better’!). We have not seen the exclusion of ‘outliers’ have a happy ending when it comes to reliability. Would you like to learn more? Listen to this podcast!
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Chris and Fred discuss the question posed to us by one of our listeners regarding the ‘flat’ bottom of the ‘bathtub curve.’ Just a bit of background – the ‘bathtub curve’ represents the hazard rate of a system. That is, it helps us understand the probability that a product that works ‘now’ will fail. The ‘flat’ part of the curve is often cited as the ‘random’ part of the curve where failure is caused by environmental overstress conditions. So how do we test for this part of the curve? … but hang on – is the ‘bathtub curve’ even a thing? Is it even relevant for the useful life of a product? If this intrigues you, listen to this podcast!
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Chris and Fred discuss one of the most popular interpretations of maintainability which is based on how long it takes to maintain something. We see so many textbooks and guides that focus on this metric as the only maintainability measure. But is this really all that matters? What about the number of technicians required? … the number of tools required? … the training required for these technicians? … the mass of these tools? Does reliability matter? Yes to all these things. But how does they relate to the time-based definition? They don’t. Listen to this podcast to learn more.
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Chris and Fred often hear at least one person (or a small group of people) challenge your ‘cultural’ reliability improvement initiative. We hear things like ‘but to make it very reliable, it becomes too heavy or expensive.’ We also hear things like ‘but to make it very reliable, we need to invest lots of money for something the customer won’t buy.’ If you boil their complaints down or get to the hub of their issue … they are really suggesting that we do ‘reliability things’ without thinking. A checklist of activities that may or may not be valuable. This could not be further from what actually happens in reality. It never happens. Listen to this podcast to learn more.
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