Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
What you will learn from this article.
Every failure is part of a puzzle. The equipment we are maintaining is trying to communicate with the use of each and every failure.
Often the message is not obvious.
There is the immediate failure. And, if we’re paying attention we can sort out the root cause of the failure along with replacing or repairing the damaged parts. Sometimes though the damage is caused by another issue with the system. [Read more…]
One aspect of creating a new product or system is the sourcing of parts, components, and materials.
Gone are the days of your organization providing every element of the final product. Henry Ford’s supply chain for early Ford automobiles includes their own forests, rubber plantations, and iron ore mines. [Gelderman, 1981]
We increasingly rely on the supply chain to create the necessary parts for the design’s functionality. Then to continue to supply those same parts for decades, in some cases. [Read more…]
As reliability engineers, we have a large number of tools available.
From project planning, system modeling, data analysis, test planning, to risk identification and defect discovery, we have techniques, procedures, algorithms to help us identify and solve reliability problems.
We also may ways to apply an individual reliability task.
We could do an exploratory drop test to see what happens if anything. Or, we could conduct a full characterization study of the force signature of drops onto different surfaces and faces from a range of heights. Or something in-between.
We have options and thus need to make choices. [Read more…]
What you will learn from this article:
Guest Post by Greg Hutchins (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
When evaluating risk response strategies, executive management along with process owners must align risk responses with the organization’s risk appetite, business objectives, costs/benefits, and overall risk strategy/tactics. Risk response strategies and tactics may involve: [Read more…]
Let’s face it, your technicians have been entering data into the CMMS for years, but you haven’t been able to use it to make improvements. Is it because the data isn’t codified or it doesn’t have the right data points? Generally, this is how most maintenance managers will view their data, but it is incorrect. The CMMS does have data that you can use almost immediately. [Read more…]
Software elements of a product or system take time to create. Thus re-using blocks of code developed for previous applications may save on development time. [Read more…]
A fault tree analysis (FTA) is a logical, graphical diagram that starts with an unwanted, undesirable, or anomalous state of a system.
The diagram then lays out the many possible faults and combination of faults within the subsystems, components, assemblies, software, and parts comprising the system which may lead to the top level unwanted fault condition. [Read more…]
Guest Post by Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
There’s always a story that explains why an event is a “Black Swan” – after the fact. Where are the “Black Swan” prognosticators before events occur? I see “after the fact” articles and statements, such as, “we knew that was coming” or “we predicted this” – all after the fact. Generally projections and predictions seem never to hold sway until after the fact. Predictions and projections never seem to occur when the prognosticator specifies — is it just that the timing never seems to work out – until after the fact. From Nostradamus to the “Bible Code” we are enamored with predictions – after the fact. Does there seem to be a theme developing here? [Read more…]
The cost of maintenance destroys your capital investment returns.
When equipment is first selected the buyer has the choice to buy for quality and long trouble-free operating life or to buy based on least cost. The least cost choice will result in high maintenance and operating expense for the life of the equipment.
When net present value cost of maintenance for cheap equipment is calculated in today’s dollars investors will discover that a large part of their capital will never earn them income but will be spent on maintenance and repair.
Keywords: replacement asset value, internal rate of return, opportunity cost [Read more…]
Physical products are made up of materials.
The materials including metals, polymers, adhesives, and many others experience loads and stresses during assembly, transport, storage, and use.
Selecting the right materials such that they both meet the needs of the customer and are sufficiently reliable relies on understanding how the material will respond to the applied stresses over time.
As with parts selection, one way to determine if a material is suitable for your application and end use is to monitor the material’s performance over time in your products. The trouble is it also transfers the risk of failure (the unknown risk of failure) to the customer.
In many cases this is unacceptable. [Read more…]
Field data analysis starts with the collection of data.
In a previous article, we used a Nevada chart to gather the counts per month of field failure data. The chart also provides the necessary data to account for how many units have not failed as of yet.
The Nevada chart on its own is just a table of numbers and does not reveal patterns of the changing nature of failure rates over time. Are we experiencing early life failures or wear-out related failures?
We need to conduct some data analysis to learn what message the data contains. [Read more…]
Guest Post by Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
Exposure to threats, hazards, and risks leads to vulnerabilities that an organization must deal with.
Commonly these are addressed via a mitigation process. Once mitigation is accomplished, often times the organization feels that the risk, threat, hazard does not need to be revisited. However, as a result of the mitigation efforts on the part of the organization, the risks, threats, hazards reconfigure and re-emerge in a different form.
In order for mitigation to be successful, it has to be a constant and ongoing process that produces a resilience to the negative effects of risks, threats, and hazards that are realized. [Read more…]
What readers will learn in this article:
