Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
In part two of this three-part article series, I am continuing to showcase some of the best questions I’ve received over the past 5 years from students of my online Root Cause Analysis class, along with my answer to them.
And as Indira Gandhi once said, “The power to question is the basis of all human progress.” And so, it is my hope that by sharing these questions and answers, others may all learn and progress as well.
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Paul H. Barringer invented the Barringer Process Reliability (BPR) process. Paul was a fellow Reliability Engineer “extraordinaire” and an outstanding mentor for myself and countless others in this field of practice. BPR highlights operational issues. If not addressed or mitigated, those could have significant revenue impacts on an operation. A BPR analysis uses the Weibull probability plot which happens to be a very well-known tool in the field of Reliability Engineering. On one side of a sheet of paper only, the BPR plot can tell the true “story” on the operation. One of those “stories” relates to high impact events best tackled by a Root Cause Analysis.
[Read more…]“A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.” Horace Mann
The definition of interest is “a feeling that accompanies or causes special attention to something or someone.” [Read more…]
[Read more…]Fred i was asked this question and wanted to know what your thoughts were on this. R and D asked me what was the criteria to decide if to test at a component level or at a system level , my answer was that it should depend on what is the reliability and confidence level of the component
your thoughts?
thanks
sd
What Every Manager Needs to Know About Business Risk from Equipment Reliability
Figure 1 shows how equipment risks start and transfer through a business. Tens of thousands of business risks, even hundreds of thousands in big operations, come from your plant and machinery.
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Projects go wrong. Despite some people’s best efforts, hopes to the contrary, or helpless denials, that’s a fact. ‘Best effort’ is sometimes not good enough to help a failing project recover, ‘hope’ can merely be unfounded optimism and denial in the light of facts is just part of the grief cycle.
Nobody really wants to fail, very few like it, and even fewer will enjoy it. Those that planned a project did not purposely plan to fail. Perhaps there may have been a bit of a gamble with a tendency towards optimism rather than applying the caution of pessimism. Projects are about risk as well as opportunity and as the idiom goes, “Nothing ventured…nothing gained” but not every cloud has a silver lining.
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Hemant Urdhwareshe, Director of Institute of Quality and Reliability presents case study to maximize fatigue strength of crankshaft using design of experiments using SigmaXL Template of Full Factorial Design with three factors each at two levels.
Hemant is Fellow of ASQ and possesses five certifications from ASQ including Six Sigma Master Black Belt and Reliability Engineer. It is recommended that viewers first watch the previous videos DOE-1, DOE-2 and DOE-3 before watching this video. SigmaXL trial version can be downloaded from www.sigmaxl.com.
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A longer video that provides an in-depth introduction to RCM basics and the RCM process.
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Reliability is one of the most overworked and misunderstood words in the world of facilities and infrastructure. Reliability is also one of the most powerful and important words. Properly evaluating and communicating reliability resolves risk, safety, quality, compliance, and human performance. Reliability also frames a powerful and effective systems approach instead of leaving gaps by cobbling together individual assets and components. Effectively communicating reliability starts with being able to quickly define it, [Read more…]
Just a short post to point to a paper on the accuracy of part count prediction techniques. A few years ago, I recalled seeing a paper that studied the difference between various parts count methods and actual results.
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I have led internal maintenance teams towards world class reliability, I have outsourced specialized maintenance functions (predictive technologies) and I have worked with companies outsourcing all maintenance.
Maintenance outsourcing continues to grow with 65% of large companies outsourcing some maintenance..but perhaps for the wrong reasons.
Just how safe is “safe”? Should working in a chemical plant have the same level of risk as skydiving (which kills about 40 people per year in the U.S.A Should working in a plant be as safe as driving your car? Or should it be as safe as flying in a plane, which is safer than driving a car by two orders of magnitude?
While the term FAR may be simple to understand and may represent a useful yardstick, many companies, especially in the U.S., are unwilling to put such targets in writing. Imagine walking into company XYZ’s plush world headquarters office and on the wall in the reception area is a sign that reads, “We at XYZ consider it tolerable to kill 4 people per 100-million-man hours.” The lawyers would have a field day! However, as we shall see, some organizations have established such quantified risk targets.
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I am happy to share my third video on Design of Experiments (DOE-3). This is the third video in our series on Design of Experiments. It is recommended that viewers should watch the first two videos (doe-1-introduction-to-design-of-experiments and DOE-2: DOE Case Study of Spot Welding) before watching this video for better learning and understanding.
In this video, we have explained how to convert uncoded values of factor-levels to coded values and vice versa. We have also explained how to create a linear regression equation from the results of a full factorial two-level experiment.
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Since launching my Root Cause Analysis class just over 5 years ago, I count myself remarkably fortunate to have been a part of the learning journeys of the 14,000+ students who have taken it. And a welcomed part of teaching courses online is fielding questions that come from students. In addition to clarifying for them various technical points of the course, I also get a “behind the curtains” look at the general training gaps in the quality profession. Afterall, that one student’s question may be in lingering in the minds of countless other quality professionals as well.
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