Practical Use of Stress-Strength Models to Develop Specifications

podcast episode with speaker Rob Schubert

Warranty returns are a great place to start for setting targets for new products. But how do you translate that to specific numbers to design to? If you know the strength of a product and the return rate, you can develop stress profiles. If you have multiple similar products, your estimates can be even better. From the profiles, targets can be developed for future products to meet and use them to calculate the expected return rates. You can even use these profiles to estimate the impact of design changes to warranty returns. [Read more…]

Essential Reliability Engineering Concepts

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

Everything will eventually fail. I like to say that keeps us in business as reliability engineers. The trick is knowing what will fail and when. There are many potential causes for a product or system to fail. Design flaws, supplied component latent defects, assembly damage, and unexpected applied stresses exist.

The key to take away from this concept is we can learn when studying failures. We can work to prevent or delay specific types of failures. By learning about failures, we learn how to create reliable products. [Read more…]

Selecting Reliability Engineering Tools

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

The toolbox for reliability engineering work is large. We have tools for risk management, data analysis, failure analysis, team building, and more. We touch on material science at the molecular level and then shift to assessing a vendor’s reliability program when you use which tool is critical to your effectiveness. So, how do you determine which tool to use for a given situation?

Let’s explore a few different situations and step through the decision process to determine which tool to employ. You may need to learn how to use a new tool or set of skills, modify how you use an existing tool, or apply what you already know how to do. [Read more…]

Overview of Life Testing in Minitab

podcast episode with speaker Rob Schubert

Many companies haven’t the resources to purchase much more expensive software specifically for reliability, but many have the quality software Minitab. Minitab has many reliability functions available; this presentation covers the basics, beginning with “individual distribution identification” to ensure your data fits one of the reliability models. Data is then analyzed with parametric distributions (right censoring vs arbitrary censoring). Additionally, the accelerated life testing functions are explored, focusing on interpreting the results. This is presented with practical examples for clarity. [Read more…]

What to Do About MTBF Use

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

While the NoMTBF movement is progressing, we still find those who want to use MTBF (or MTTF). As you know, MTxx-type metrics are means. They contain little information and are generally misunderstood and misused. So, what should a well-educated practitioner do? [Read more…]

Reliability Engineering versus Quality Engineering

podcast episode

I recently received a question about the differences and similarities and which discipline is better concerning reliability and quality engineering. Some say reliability is a characteristic of quality, while I say reliability is quality yet over time. [Read more…]

How to Learn Reliability Engineering

podcast episode

It’s impossible to point to one moment, class, seminar, workshop, or conference where I learned reliability engineering. Not one situation, project, conversation, or meeting, either. Learning reliability engineering is a journey, and each is different. [Read more…]