How to Balance Reliability vs New Tech

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Chris and Fred discuss how we balance … or incorporate new technology with reliability. Is reliability something that only comes with legacy or age? … as in old technology? Can you make a product that is based on new technology and have it reliable? … are these concepts mutually exclusive? If we look at this from an ‘asset management’ perspective, there is a movement out there that we need things like increasingly sophisticated sensing technology to ensure reliability, availability, throughput or whatever it is we are trying to improve. From a ‘developmental product’ perspective, does new technology mean ‘all bets are off’ when it comes to reliability? Well … we talk about these things in this podcast. ᐅ Play Episode

Customer Experience and Failures – Its not you its them!

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Chris and Fred discuss what it means to ‘fail.’ Not from a personal sense! But what does it mean for your product to fail. Engineering or design specifications describe what the product or system must do. So does failure simply occur when the product can no longer meet all these specifications? What if your product or system meets all these criteria – but your customer ‘thinks’ is has failed? We have seen many instances where a group of people who design and make products will vehemently argue that even if the customer thinks something has failed when it meets the specifications, then nothing is wrong. Is it? What do you think the customer will do? Do you think they will be ‘happy’? If this is a problem you come across, then listen to this podcast.
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When to Use a Previous Test Plan

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Chris and Fred discuss when (and if) you can use a reliability test plan that you have used before. If it worked then … why won’t it work now? Won’t you save money, time and other things that you can get bonuses for? Well yes. We received a question from one of our listeners who asked why you might not want to test the product the same way. There are many good reasons why you wouldn’t want to do this. If you want to learn more, listen to this podcast.
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Battery Reliability Considerations

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Chris and Fred discuss battery reliability issues and how batteries fail. This based on feedback from one of our listeners (thanks!) There is a lot of energy in batteries that if failure allows this energy to be able to ‘do something’ … then catastrophic failure is an understatement. But as with everything, it is all about the customer. Is failure (for example) when battery capacity reaches 80 per cent of its original value? Is this 80 per cent figure going to be the advertised capacity? If you would like to learn more, listen to this podcast.
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High Temperature Environmental or Reliability Testing

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Chris and Fred discuss the difference between ‘environmental’ and ‘reliability’ testing … but is there a difference? This question was raised by one of our listeners – which means this is a topical question. A question that could apply to you. Now some may seem that we are dodging the question in this podcast – because we think it is all about intent and not a category. That is – every test should be an experiment. It should be constructed to answer a question, or provide information for a specific decision. And once you focus on the information you are trying to provide – what is the point in classifying something as ‘environmental’ versus ‘reliability’ testing? Each test could conceivably be neither, one, or both. Listen to this podcast if you want to learn more.
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Is Testing Always Necessary?

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Chris and Fred discuss what happens when you have failure … but don’t know why. This is a challenging problem that most reliability engineers will face throughout their career. You will always need to use an objective, structured and strategic approach. And you will often find that a lot of information is at your fingertips – you may be able to create a very short list of candidate root causes without having to test. Effort without direction won’t solve problems. If you want to learn more about solving this really challenging problems, then listen to this podcast.
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Leaders That Don’t Understand

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Chris and Fred discuss ‘Leaders that Don’t Understand.’ And by ‘Don’t Understand’ … we mean they don’t understand what their organization sells or does. Sometimes this can work (within reason). Leaders who are not experts in their product or services can still be effective if they know that they need to listen to those around them. But this can go too far – if all decisions need to be collectively agreed by a large cadre of people before the leader in question agrees to make a decision. This isn’t leadership at all. The concept of having ‘everyone on board’ can decimate decision making speed, innovation and a focus on customers. Have you had a similar experience?
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What Do I Do When MTBF is Imposed?

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Chris and Fred discuss what happens when you can’t avoid having the MTBF imposed upon you – even if it is your own organization and not the customer. Perhaps you are told that ‘our competitors quote the MTBF … so we have to as well!’ But you can (sneakily) tailor test data to get whatever MTBF you want. You can make life easy on yourself by not challenging this paradigm (noting that you will most likely get an unhappy customer). But it is almost impossible to apportion MTBF goals to individual designers that even allow the motivated ones to create a reliable system. So what do you do? Listen to this podcast to help you on your reliability journey.
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Specification Requires Testing… Really?

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Chris and Fred discuss scenarios where it is (for whatever reason) impossible to demonstrate reliability through testing. Some organizations think that if you can’t demonstrate through testing … then it can’t be a requirement that appears in a specification. So … does this mean that the customer can’t get something that is reliable if we can’t test for it? … can customers even ask for it? Of course they can. The customer knows what they want. Everyone needs to understand that you can verify performance through activities that don’t involve testing (… like analysis). This is how it works for nuclear power plants … so what makes your organization special? Listen to this podcast if this intrigues you.
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Characteristics of an Organization That Limits Reliability

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Chris and Fred discuss what ‘tell’s an organization that sucks at reliability has. That is, can you just tell an organization makes terrible products before you even get to their reliability department/guidebook/strategy/laboratory? And if you can, what are they? Our experience shows that when we are brought in to solve a ‘reliability’ problem, we need to address a vision/leadership/resourcing/(insert poor business practice here) issue. If this interests you … please listen to this podcast!
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Are Regulators Good For Reliability

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Chris and Fred discuss the role regulators play in many industries. Are we better off because of them? In many cases … yes. But perhaps regulators are also getting in the way of us doing things better. And at what point does their ‘net harm’ exceed their ‘net good’? Can regulators do a better job, and perhaps create an alternative to archaic checklists and compliance audits? We think yes. If this topic interests you, listen to this podcast!
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Paths to Learning Reliability

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Chris and Fred discuss about how to learn to be a reliability engineer. And ‘learn’ means different things. It could be experiential learning. It could be academic learning. It could be instructional or ‘mentorship’ learning. And you tend to be a particular type of a reliability engineer based on how you learn about reliability. But there are pros and cons for each approach. And sometimes, you just ‘stumble’ into a learning process when a company sponsors you to become their expert. There are so many different ways to learn about reliability. This podcast talks about some of the more common ways, and how each tailors to a certain learning path.
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Introducing Accendo Reliability 2020

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Chris and Fred discuss the new challenges of reliability in the upcoming years. Accendo was originally setup to help reliability professionals in an objective and broad forum. And this appeared to fill a void. Trade magazines are over-bearing, with sponsor adds replacing well thought-out articles. Professional societies are becoming less and less relevant (but more expensive). And Accendo lists ‘competitor’ programs, blogs and articles where other organizations strictly focus on their products, courses, books and so on. So Accendo has become the only ‘one stop shop’ for the reliability engineering community who want to develop their skills.

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Professional Tidier Marie Kondo … and How we Can Do the Same in Reliability

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Chris and Carl discussing how the self discipline of taking care of personal “tidiness” can be applied to improve the organization of reliability activities.
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