Fred Schenkelberg — Thought Leader

Author of CRE Preparation Notes, Musings", NoMTBF, multiple books & ebooks>, co-host on Speaking of Reliability>/a>, and speaker in the Accendo Reliability Webinar Series.

This author's archive lists contributions of articles and episodes.

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

The Quality Triangle and Reliability

How Does Reliability Fit with the Quality Triangle?

The Quality Triangle provides a method to establish priorities for a project. It strives to balance time, cost, and quality (or scope instead of quality). It does not include reliability.

Now I am a bit bias as a reliability engineer and believe a projects set of priorities should explicitly include reliability performance. Of course, there are many potential priorities, yet reliability certainly can make or break a product, it’s market acceptance, and an organization’s profitability.

So, given a quality triangle based set of priorities, how does reliability fit in? [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

Fundamentals of Risk

An Introduction, Basic Definitions, and Overview of a Risk Management Framework

Risk is borne from uncertainty. The reliability performance of your product line and individual products is uncertain. Identifying and understanding the risks involved helps your team mitigate reliability performance risks.

An obvious risk and common question when developing a new product involves the field failure rate. If the failure rate is too high, it may dissuade customers from buying the product. If too low, we assign funds unnecessarily to cover unrealized warranty expenses. [Read more…]

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A Framework for Risk Management

Making or supporting decisions involving product or system reliability is fraught with uncertainty. Is it reliable enough? Will failures occur prematurely? Are failures dangerous?

Uncertainty is risk.

In recent years more organizations and international standard bodies have focused on risk management. Identifying, analyzing, and mitigating uncertainty in a systematic manner.

There is not a set way for every organization to organize a risk management process. The ISO 31000 standard does describe a framework for the implementation of risk management within your organization. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

CRE BoK and Risk Management

The New ASQ CRE BoK Group: Risk Management

The 2018 ASQ CRE Body of Knowledge has a new top-level section titled II. Risk Management.

A few of the topics, 6 of the 9, are the same or similar to topics in the previous CRE BoK. There are three new topics that extend the reliability engineers need to know, understand, and use risk management tools.

Overall the new section of Risk Management has three groups of topics:

A. Identification

B. Analysis

C. Mitigation

Let’s take a quick look at the details in this new section and highlight the changes and new elements. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 6 Comments

Review of 2018 ASQ CRE Body of Knowledge

The new CRE body of knowledge goes into effect for exams starting January 2018.

The changes include topics that has been dropped, added, or altered. There also is a new structure with 5 main groups rather than the previous seven. Overall, the BoK remained pretty much the same with a reorganization of the topics.

Reading the new BoK and comparing it to the old BoK raises a few concerns or observations. Let’s take a look at the new structure and what the changes say about the reliability engineering profession. [Read more…]

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Discussion skills

Discussion Skills for a Reliability Engineer

Talking is not the same as a discussion or conversation. Talking is one direction only. If two people are talking, they are talking at each other.

A discussion is two way. When two people have a discussion information passes both ways, both speak, both listen.

As an engineer, there is plenty to discuss. We work with others to find solutions, make compromises, determine optimizations, and finish projects. We need to share our knowledge and insights, as well as learn from others.

You can learn to foster true discussions and minimize simply talking at one another. You can take steps to enable the give and take exchange of a discussion. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

8 New Topics in the ASQ CRE Body of Knowledge

Last week we reviewed the 10+ topics removed from the CRE body of knowledge (BoK). This week, let’s look at the additions.

Three of the additions are new categories or groups of topics that in part contain new topics. There are five new topics, that in most cases included bits and pieces of concepts buried in the previous BoK.

Let’s take a look at each additions in a bit more detail. Some I agree with, some I wonder what the motivation is behind the addition, and some I question why it is included. [Read more…]

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Fundamentals of RBD

An Introduction, Basic Uses, and Examples of How RBD Calculations Work

A reasonable model helps you make informed decisions. A simple reliability block diagram often provides the insights your team needs to prioritize and achieve the desired reliability performance. Let’s create, populate, and use RBDs effectively.

RBDs comprise a few simple elements and arrangements yet can describe a wide range of products and systems. There are a few assumptions to remember and a few basic ways to create a useful model for your system. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 3 Comments

10+ Dropped Items from the ASQ CRE Body of Knowledge

A Review of the 2018 ASQ CRE Body of Knowledge

I just noticed the new 2018 ASQ CRE Body of Knowledge had been posted on the ASQ site. The new BoK will be in effect for CRE exams as of January 2018. Thus, we have six months to adjust to the new body of knowledge.

This is part 1 of a multipart review of the new BoK. Here we’ll look at the parts that those preparing for the exam will not have to master or review. There are 10+ topics dropped completely or in part from the BoK.

In future articles, we’ll review what has been added, what has been changed (a review), and how to best prepare for exams based on the new BoK. Plus, we can look over past BoK’s to understand where reliability engineering practice is today.

In part, the logic is these sets of tools (topics) that are not widely used by working reliability engineers. In some cases, I agree, and in others, I don’t. Let’s look at the eight topics not found in the upcoming CRE BoK. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

Listening Skills for Reliability Engineers

Listening Skills to Improve Your Ability to Communicate with Influence

Did you hear what they said? Or, were you busy loading for your next verbal barrage?

As my mother would remind me, one should listen twice of often as speaking. Something about the ratio of ears to mouths in the population. I have to agree with her, that one can learn a lot by listening.

Listening may not seem to be a skill that one needs to master. Yet, how often have you walked away from a meeting where one or more participants obviously were not listening? How often are points repeated in an effort to be heard?

Being able to listen, listen well, can be honed and improved. A focus on being a better listener will improve your ability to communicate and influence as a reliability engineer. It has benefits beyond our reliability work, too. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

The Eyring Model

The Eyring Model for Accelerated Testing

Sometimes the reaction rate of a process relies on two stresses. For chemical reactions temperature seems to influence the rate of the reaction. Yet, other stresses such as humidity or voltage may also play a significant role.

H. Eyring suggested a model that assumes the contribution of each stress on the reaction rate is independent thus one could multiple the respective stress contributions to the rate of reaction.

The Erying model provides a means to account for the contributions of temperature and another stress when modeling the time to failure of select failure mechanisms. [Read more…]

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Writing Skills

Technical Writing Skills for Reliability Engineers

Your peers, team mates, and management want to understand your writing. They want to quickly get your point, find supporting information, and take action.

As a reliability engineer, you write proposals, plans, and reports. You write problem statements, failure analysis findings, recommended process improvements, and much more.

You write to document a process or plan. More often you write to encourage others to take action.

Writing clear, concise missives the incite action is a hallmark of a good reliability engineer. You are doing technical writing.

You can learn to write well. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

Waterfall Test Planning

A Waterfall Test Planning Approach to Product Reliability Environmental Testing

I may have the name, waterfall, used incorrectly here.

Years ago I learned from a former Apple reliability group manager how to organize reliability and environmental related testing where samples cascade through a sequence of stress conditions and evaluations. He called it waterfall testing. [Read more…]

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The Ability to Influence

The Ability to Influence Reliability Performance and Results

The role of a reliability engineer is to support the other engineers and managers as they make decisions concerning reliability.

Our ability may be well honed and effective. Or it may be fumbling or annoying. It is our ability to communicate along with our technical ability that determine our ability to influence well.

We may do analysis or testing. We follow up on failures and evaluate suppliers. What we actually are doing is influencing decisions. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

ALT Allocation of Test Units

One question that you should consider when planning multiple stress accelerated life test (ALT) is the allocation of test units to the various stresses.

We want to create a model detailing the relationship between stress and time to failure. We also want to project the time to failure estimates to use conditions. Ideally, we test at nominal conditions only and gather time to failure information. We do not have the luxury of time thus explore using ALT.

One method of allocation is to place an equal number of samples with each stress level. Is that the best approach? [Read more…]