Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Chris and Fred discuss the differences, pros and cons of FTA (fault tree analysis) and RBD (reliability block diagrams). Need to learn more about how to model system reliability? Do you struggle to spell FTA or RBDs? Listen to this podcast!
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Chris and Fred discuss about this thing called a ‘k out of n’ system … and how most people don’t really know about how they contribute to system reliability. Do you know what the reliability curve of a ‘k out of n’ system looks like when compared to series or parallel systems? Don’t know what these systems are? Listen to this podcast!
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What does it mean to be a ‘visionary leader’? It starts with being different to most people. You can’t just become a visionary leader by completing a leadership course, being mentored by someone awesome, or by compiling an impressive curriculum vitae (although these can help people with the potential to become visionary leaders get there).
One of the first things that the then United States Army Chief of Staff (General George C. Marshall) did at the outbreak of World War II was to fire the majority of his officers who had climbed the ladder of military ranks throughout the previous 20 years of relative peace.
Boeing is really having a bad stretch. Or more specifically, the passengers flying in its 737 MAX aircraft are.
Most recently a ‘plug’ flew off the side of Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane in flight, leaving a refrigerator sized hole next to startled (but mercifully still living) passengers. A ‘plug’ is a panel that seals up a hole in the fuselage that is included during manufacture to allow an optional emergency exit to be installed.
This failure is not a good look … especially for a three-month-old plane. Lots of manufacturers of different machines throughout history have been able to successfully bolt panels to cover holes of a similar size to that of an aircraft emergency exit. It is not hard to do. Nor is it hard to have systems in place to make sure it is done right.
Chris and Fred discuss some of the things we have learned in the world of reliability directly due to World War II. Not many people know that around one third of today’s medical vaccines were developed out of necessity from World War II … and something similar happened when it came to making things reliable.
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Chris and Fred discuss what it means to ‘assume’ something. We assume things all the time in our daily lives. We would never get anything done if we didn’t rely on quick ‘guesses’ about the world around us. But then there are those ‘assumptions’ that get us in trouble. So what’s the difference?
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Chris and Fred discuss when you should do this thing called Monte Carlo simulation? … in fact … what is it?
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Chris and Fred discuss how we can go about estimating reliability … especially when you don’t have a lot of data, experience or other things that textbooks say you need to have to estimate reliability?
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Many reliability engineers know what fatigue is (in addition to feeling tired). Fatigue is an example of a ‘failure mechanism.’ A failure mechanism is the physical, chemical or electrical process that results in failure. Fatigue is interesting in that it allows something to fail without it ever being exposed to stresses that are beyond its strength. How does this happen? Fatigue is based on cracks. Cracks magnify stresses at their tips. So cycling stresses can have the effect of incrementally (and sometimes very slowly) increasing the crack length at the tip. Fatigue has caused all manners of failures that have surprised us throughout the history of engineering. But now we have learned so much more about this really fascinating failure mechanism can cause steel, aluminium and other material to fail, even when the stresses they experience are tiny. Want to learn more about fatigue? And how you can help prevent it? Join us for this webinar.
Chris and Fred discuss how to help me, you and the people around us more aware of reliability (and reliability engineering)? Good question!
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Chris and Fred discuss Military Handbook 217 Version F for the ‘Reliability Prediction of Electronic Equipment’ or MIL-HDBK 217F … and why being forced to use it is borderline evil.
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Chris and Fred discuss how to approach reliability objectives and testing for consumable elements of a product or system.
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We often use the word ‘quality’ to describe products that are manufactured with minimal defects (… and within tolerances). If you are involved in the field of quality (and manufacturing), then you might have heard of ‘capability indices.’ These are simple numbers that essentially describe the ‘quality’ of things being manufactured. There are certain guidelines and industry ‘standards’ for what these numbers should be. Have you ever heard of the ‘6 sigma’? It promotes a capability index of two (2). But what does this mean? These numbers also correspond with the fraction of defective products. Want to learn what these capability indices mean? … and how to get them? … and how to convert them to things like Parts Per Million (PPM) defects? Or better yet … if you need to learn a bit more about manufacturing and how we measure quality in general? Join us for this webinar.
Chris and Fred discuss the Military Handbook 217 Version F (from 1991 no less) … again? Ever heard of it?
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Apple new iPhones will be somewhat different to those of the past. They will now have a USB-C charging and data port, and not Apple’s lightning cables. Why? Because the European Union said so. And they said so because they are not happy with the number of different charging cables we all now need for our various devices. Having a single cable that can charge an iPhone, Samsung smartphone, and virtually every other small electronic consumer product makes sense. It means fewer cables, smaller carbon footprints, less electronic waste, and prices will come down as less and less products assume that they need to provide a charging cable in their packaging. I have at least 20 power cables in my office that have been provided with various electronic gadgetry over the years.
