Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

  • Home
  • About
    • Contributors
  • Reliability.fm
    • Speaking Of Reliability
    • Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast
    • Quality during Design
    • Critical Talks
    • Dare to Know
    • Maintenance Disrupted
    • Metal Conversations
    • The Leadership Connection
    • Practical Reliability Podcast
    • Reliability Matters
    • Reliability it Matters
    • Maintenance Mavericks Podcast
    • Women in Maintenance
    • Accendo Reliability Webinar Series
    • Asset Reliability @ Work
  • Articles
    • CRE Preparation Notes
    • on Leadership & Career
      • Advanced Engineering Culture
      • Engineering Leadership
      • Managing in the 2000s
      • Product Development and Process Improvement
    • on Maintenance Reliability
      • Aasan Asset Management
      • CMMS and Reliability
      • Conscious Asset
      • EAM & CMMS
      • Everyday RCM
      • History of Maintenance Management
      • Life Cycle Asset Management
      • Maintenance and Reliability
      • Maintenance Management
      • Plant Maintenance
      • Process Plant Reliability Engineering
      • ReliabilityXperience
      • RCM Blitz®
      • Rob’s Reliability Project
      • The Intelligent Transformer Blog
    • on Product Reliability
      • Accelerated Reliability
      • Achieving the Benefits of Reliability
      • Apex Ridge
      • Metals Engineering and Product Reliability
      • Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics
      • Product Validation
      • Reliability Engineering Insights
      • Reliability in Emerging Technology
    • on Risk & Safety
      • CERM® Risk Insights
      • Equipment Risk and Reliability in Downhole Applications
      • Operational Risk Process Safety
    • on Systems Thinking
      • Communicating with FINESSE
      • The RCA
    • on Tools & Techniques
      • Big Data & Analytics
      • Experimental Design for NPD
      • Innovative Thinking in Reliability and Durability
      • Inside and Beyond HALT
      • Inside FMEA
      • Integral Concepts
      • Learning from Failures
      • Progress in Field Reliability?
      • Reliability Engineering Using Python
      • Reliability Reflections
      • Testing 1 2 3
      • The Manufacturing Academy
  • eBooks
    • Reliability Engineering Management DRAFT
  • Resources
    • Accendo Authors
    • FMEA Resources
    • Feed Forward Publications
    • Openings
    • Books
    • Webinars
    • Journals
    • Higher Education
    • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • 14 Ways to Acquire Reliability Engineering Knowledge
    • Reliability Analysis Methods online course
    • Measurement System Assessment
    • SPC-Process Capability Course
    • Design of Experiments
    • Foundations of RCM online course
    • Quality during Design Journey
    • Reliability Engineering Statistics
    • An Introduction to Reliability Engineering
    • An Introduction to Quality Engineering
    • Process Capability Analysis course
    • Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process course
    • Return on Investment online course
    • CRE Preparation Online Course
    • Quondam Courses
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Live Events
  • Calendar
    • Call for Papers Listing
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Calendar
  • Login
    • Member Home

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

What is Six Sigma and How is it Used in Quality Engineering?

What is Six Sigma and How is it Used in Quality Engineering?

Another of the most commonly asked questions about quality engineering is “What is Six Sigma and how is it used in quality engineering?”

Six Sigma is a data-driven approach to continuous improvement that aims to reduce defects and variability in products, processes, and systems. It is based on the idea that by identifying and addressing the root causes of defects and variability, organizations can significantly improve the quality of their products and processes. Six Sigma is used to identify and eliminate defects and variability by collecting and analyzing data, identifying patterns and trends, and implementing process improvements.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

What Reliability Engineers Can Learn from Quality

What Reliability Engineers Can Learn from Quality

a.k.a. “the dark side”

Reliability engineering and quality engineering are closely related disciplines that both focus on ensuring that products, processes, and systems are efficient, effective, and meet the required standards. As such, there are several ways in which reliability engineers can improve their skills by learning about quality engineering.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

Understanding First Article Inspection

Understanding First Article Inspection

For the seasoned manufacturing quality professional, First Article Inspection (FAI) is a familiar process performed after the first production run of a new or redesigned part. But for those outside of or newer to the quality profession, the requirements of FAI may provoke a lot of questions and uncertainty.

In short, FAI is the process of planning, conducting and reporting the verification of a production process. This verification “closes the loop” between the customer’s expectations — usually described on the part’s engineering drawing — and the actual output of the supplier’s process.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

Understanding Job Satisfaction with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Understanding Job Satisfaction with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

In a season 2 episode of AMC’s acclaimed TV show “Better Call Saul”, its lead character Jimmy McGill asks his assistant Omar to “take a letter” as he dictates a handful of disjointed phrases to tender his resignation from his lucrative position at the Davis & Main law firm1. During a pause between Jimmy’s thoughts, Omar blankly states, “I just didn’t realize how unhappy you were here.” Jimmy’s response, while puzzling and a bit comical, describes a concept key to understanding the nature of job satisfaction. He replies to Omar, “Not unhappy, per se. More like not happy.”

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

The Window and the Mirror; A Framework for Building Credibility

The vast majority of professionals will never rise to the heights of leading a major corporation. But because of the public nature of executives and the companies they oversee, business leaders and their management methods often form effective case studies for those who manage smaller projects and organizations.

Over time, professionals who make a habit of reading trade journals and analyzing business reports can begin spotting both the useful and the futile patterns among these executives’ leadership styles. One such pattern, coined by the bestselling author of “Good to Great” Jim Collins, is called “The Window and the Mirror”.1

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

To Change is to Change Twice

To Change is to Change Twice

As a teenager in the 1980s, I was an avid reader of Omni, a now defunct magazine dedicated to the future—a far-off world filled with super humans, artificial biospheres and frequent encounters with extraterrestrial beings. Omni catered to armchair futurists like me with science and science fiction stories by A-level writers like Bernard Dixon and William Burroughs.

Future-oriented mass media such as Omni and “Star Wars” gives its consumers a plausible vision of everyday life for future generations. What these sources don’t typically deliver, though, is the path of change to get there. 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

The Cost of Opportunity

The Cost of Opportunity

Everyone working in a decision-making role has at least an intuitive understanding of the concept of opportunity costs-the value of the thing you didn’t choose. Simply stated, when you say ‘Yes’ to one thing, you simultaneously say ‘No’ to everything else you could have chosen instead. And those things to which you say ‘No’ have a value that you’re relinquishing. When I was a teenager, I heard an older gentleman quip, “When I said ‘I do’ to my wife, I was also saying ‘I don’t’ to all the other girls out there”. That man understood opportunity cost.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

Expanding your Opportunities

Expanding your Opportunities

As the quality manger for a tier two automotive supplier, I recently had the opportunity to hire a quality supervisor following the retirement of a long-time member of our team. Our company’s human resource manager and I worked together through the entire selection process. Given the status of our region’s economy and the recent closure of several large factories, I wasn’t surprised when our mailbox started filling up with resumes in response to ads on the popular Internet job sites. The typical respondent was a mid-career professional with over 15 years of experience in manufacturing that had either been recently laid-off due or who wanted to move up in their career.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

Sharpening the Axe – Developing a Process Inspection Plan

Sharpening the Axe – Developing a Process Inspection Plan

Abraham Lincoln taught the value of adequate preparation when he said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” By training, quality professionals are often focused on verifying the correctness of a product. A traditional inspector at the Lincoln Timber Company might have dutifully marked in her audit log the date and time, the type and size of tree, followed by the comment, “Cut down.”

But Honest Abe would have advised her to take a closer look at the tools and process used to complete the job.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

What is Design Thinking?

What is Design Thinking?

With all the buzz these days about design thinking, some of you may be wondering what it’s all about. How does it relate to design? And what can non-designers gain from it?

Design thinking is far more than simply designing products and services—it’s an approach to problem-solving that can be applied to an incredibly wide range of applications.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

What is Probability?

What is Probability?

with co-author Mark Fiedeldey

The definition of the term “reliability” begins by specifying that reliability is a probability.  Therefore, the concept of a probability, while sometimes intimidating to reliability practitioners, is fundamentally important.

Probability can be defined as the extent to which an event is likely to occur. Just as an average is a measure of central tendency, probability is a measure of uncertainty in a particular event or outcome. That’s all … Nothing intimidating here.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

by Ray Harkins 1 Comment

Cautiously Confident

Cautiously Confident

with co-author Mark Fiedeldey

Working with data, we often choose a model to represent that data. We then use the data to estimate the parameters of the chosen model and we then calculate a confidence interval about the model’s parameters. The confidence interval gives us a numerical assessment of how certain we are, based on our data, of the true value of the distribution parameter we estimated.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

Overcoming Decision-Making Biases

Overcoming Decision-Making Biases

In measurement science, “bias” refers to the systematic error component of the measurement system. Unlike other types of measurement error that are randomly distributed, a bias predictably shifts a measurement in the same direction.

For instance, I recently facilitated a “round robin” measurement correlation study with two other companies, where we compared the outputs of our hardness testers using the same set of test samples. While preparing for that study, I realized that one of our hardness testers, on average, tested 1.1 Rockwell B points higher than the reference sample. It wasn’t testing exactly 1.1 points over, but instead ranged from .8 to 1.4 points over across a series of tests. In other words, we had two error components: a bias of +1.1 points and a random error of +/- .3 points. To compensate for this bias, we shifted down the output reading of the tester by 1.1 points, leaving only the random error component in our tester’s output values.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

The Hard Facts About Soft Skills

The Hard Facts About Soft Skills

A version of this article was previously published in the December 2015 edition of Quality Progress magazine.

Last summer while visiting my hometown, I ran into Sam, an old friend who works in a senior technical position for a very large organization. In the course of our conversation, Sam told me about a recent discussion he had with his division’s manager about the possibility of moving up in the company. He was trying to find out if his boss would recommend him for a promotion to a particular supervisory level position that had just opened. His manager’s reply was provocative.  He said, “Sam, you’re excellent at your job. I don’t know what we’d do without you. But before I could recommend you for a team leader position, you’re going to have to work on your soft skills.”

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

Process Monitoring with Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)

Process Monitoring with Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)

Aside from meeting specific quality system standard requirements—such as those found in ISO 9001 or IATF 16949—well-designed quality system metrics also can serve as meaningful indicators of the strengths and weaknesses of an organization’s various processes.

As a quality manager, I often consider how precisely our quality system objectives and other metrics describe the effectiveness of our systems. One metric I started using recently—overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)—has provided our management team with a composite measurable that encompasses three major branches of our operation: maintenance, production and quality.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, The Manufacturing Academy

Next Page »
The Accendo Reliablity logo of a sun face in circuit

Please login to have full access.




Lost Password? Click here to have it emailed to you.

Not already a member? It's free and takes only a moment to create an account with your email only.

Join

Your membership brings you all these free resources:

  • Live, monthly reliability webinars & recordings
  • eBooks: Finding Value and Reliability Maturity
  • How To articles & insights
  • Podcasts & additional information within podcast show notes
  • Podcast suggestion box to send us a question or topic for a future episode
  • Course (some with a fee)
  • Largest reliability events calendar
  • Course on a range of topics - coming soon
  • Master reliability classes - coming soon
  • Basic tutorial articles - coming soon
  • With more in the works just for members
Speaking of Reliability podcast logo

Subscribe and enjoy every episode

RSS
iTunes
Stitcher

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about podcasts and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Dare to Know podcast logo

Subscribe and enjoy every episode

RSS
iTunes
Stitcher

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about podcasts and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Accendo Reliability Webinar Series podcast logo

Subscribe and enjoy every episode

RSS
iTunes
Stitcher

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about podcasts and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Recent Articles

  • How Reliability Engineers Can Improve Their Communication in Information Sessions
  • FMEA Detection Risk: Insights and Advices
  • How to Structure Your ERM System
  • Rate of Occurrence of Failure
  • What is Six Sigma and How is it Used in Quality Engineering?

© 2023 FMS Reliability · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Cookies Policy

This site uses cookies to give you a better experience, analyze site traffic, and gain insight to products or offers that may interest you. By continuing, you consent to the use of cookies. Learn how we use cookies, how they work, and how to set your browser preferences by reading our Cookies Policy.