Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Today’s Gremlin – Don’t sweat the small stuff, gets us into trouble by skipping details and steps, that are important, often to save time. Don’t sweat the small stuff cuts a lot of corners, and makes a lot of mistakes through that carelessness. Often, he’s trying to save time, meet a deadline, or satisfy operators who urgently need their equipment back.
[Read more…]
“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works.” (Gordon Gekko, ‘Wall Street’ movie, 1987)
When energy-trading company Enron declared bankruptcy in 2001, it was the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. Enron’s execs were pocketing millions while knowingly overstating the company’s earnings to shareholders through fraudulent accounting.
“Greed is good” even in the highly regulated financial services sector. UK’s Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards sums it up nicely when it says, “Too many bankers, especially at the most senior levels, have operated in an environment with insufficient personal responsibility. Top bankers dodged accountability for failings on their watch by claiming ignorance or hiding behind collective decision-making. […] Remuneration has incentivised misconduct and excessive risk-taking, reinforcing a culture where poor standards were often considered normal. Many bank staff have been paid too much for doing the wrong things, with bonuses awarded and paid before the long-term consequences become apparent. The potential rewards for fleeting short-term success have sometimes been huge, but the penalties for failure, often manifest only later, have been much smaller or negligible. Despite recent reforms, many of these problems persist.” – with emphasis (Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, 2013)
[Read more…]At Pardus Consulting, we’ve just launched an online Weibull calculator that performs life data analysis on datasets containing both failed and suspended data.
The tool is free to use, and was built to support the reliability and maintenance community.
We hope you get a lot of use out of it!
The tool can be accessed HERE.
Effective communication is often cited as one of the most essential leadership skills in any field. In the maintenance sector, where operations are complex, fast-paced, and directly linked to the safety and efficiency of equipment, communication becomes even more critical. As a leader in maintenance, your ability to clearly convey information, foster collaboration, and keep all team members aligned can directly impact the success of your operations and the achievement of your organizational goals. This is why effective communication in maintenance leadership is not just a skill, it’s a necessity.
[Read more…]
Dear friends, we are happy to release this 75th video of our technical channel ! In this video, Hemant Urdhwareshe explains the concepts of HPP and NHPP for repairable systems. The NHPP is foundation for Reliability Growth! Hemant is a Fellow of ASQ and is certified by ASQ as Six Sigma Master Black Belt (CMBB), Black Belt (CSSBB), Reliability Engineer (CRE), Quality Engineer (CQE) and Quality Manager (CMQ/OE).
[Read more…]
In this tutorial, I show you how to determine which Functions to include in your Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) so you can avoid the common pitfall of creating a meaningless list of generic Functions. Many organizations end up with a “Component FMEA,” filled with unnecessary or poorly defined Functions that don’t truly represent what’s needed from the equipment. In this video, I’ll walk you through an algorithm that will help you focus on what’s important, using an industrial air compressor as an example. By the end, you’ll know how to:
Don’t let a never-ending list of Functions bog down your analysis—watch now to learn how to streamline your approach!
[Read more…]
When we think of reliability tools, the FMEA often takes the spotlight. But if you’re skipping the P-Diagram, you’re likely missing the very foundation of failure prevention.
In my 15+ years working on field reliability and failure analysis, I’ve come to view the Parameter Diagram (P-Diagram) as the unsung hero of robust design.
[Read more…]
In the next chapter in our series on taking a hardware product from idea to scale, we move into the Design & Planning stage. Minimal Viable Products (MVP) and roadmaps will help you identify the key features for your new product.
[Read more…]
The Weibull distribution’s popularity across various industries stems from its remarkable flexibility and adaptability in modeling a wide range of data types, especially in reliability engineering and failure time analysis. This versatility is primarily due to the Weibull distribution’s shape parameter, which allows it to model different failure rates over time, aligning closely with the real-world behavior of many systems and components.
[Read more…]
By it’s cover no doubt. The title and cover are important, this is true. When you judge a reliability book we often first see and evaluate the cover.
The author? Do you buy the book based on who wrote or edited it?
Do you have a quick scan or check for key features before you add the book to your library? I’m curious how you select a book to use a reference for your work. The books we read and use for work shape our work, thus it’s important to have the right works at our disposal. [Read more…]
WHEN YOU DO A RELIABILITY FAILURE STUDY LOOKING TO PROTECT YOUR BUSINESS AGAINST LARGE UNCOMMON FAILURES, AND THOSE FAILURES THAT ARE VERY COMMON BUT THOUGHT TO BE TOO SMALL TO BE A SERIOUS PROBLEM, BE SURE TO DO LIFETIME FINANCIAL ANALYSIS WHEN DECIDING THE FAILURES TO INVESTIGATE
—
[Read more…]I am to do a reliability failure study and would like to know the definition of repetitive failure with respect to some recognized reliability standard.
We want to apply the recommendations in the standard for failure codes in our CMMS system to decide which equipment failures need a reliability failure study. For example, we have a centrifugal pump bearing fail twice in a year. I am of the opinion this is a repetitive failure.
Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not.
Marc Andreessen – Venture Capitalist
We’ve been involved in engineering and tech automation for years. What surprises us is the observable breadth, depth, and impacts of automation (AI included) over the last five years, which COVID accelerated. What’s the big deal about automation?
[Read more…]
This article appeared in 1983 in the ORSA Applied Probability SIG under the pseudonym “Anonymous”
In another country far away, there were power plants that generated cheap electricity by unclear means. Since operation of the plants involved some risk, the Unclear Regulatory Commission was established to license power plants for operations. The URC decreed that any plant could have a license if its probability of an unclear accident was smaller than 0.000001 per year. The plant operators said they were uncertain.
[Read more…]
In today’s short video, I share how the delivery of our new metal building reminded me of a key aspect of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). RCM was designed to be carried out with a Facilitated Working Group approach, bringing together a team of equipment experts to answer the RCM questions.
By using this approach, not only do you get comprehensive answers, but you also capture and memorialize the knowledge and experience of your experts—something that could amount to over 100 cumulative years’ experience in the room!
Even if one of your team members retires or moves on, their knowledge remains. Watch to find out how you can make the most of this valuable resource.
[Read more…]
Dear friends, we are happy to upload this video on how to estimate B10 life when failure data follows Weibull or Lognormal Distribution. Your feedback on the video is welcome!
This video from the Institute of Quality and Reliability explains how to determine BX life for products that follow Weibull and log-normal distributions. BX life is defined as the time by which X percent of items are expected to fail. For example, B10 life means that 10% of items are expected to fail, which implies a 90% reliability.
We recommend watching following videos before watching this video for better learning experience:
B10 Life for Exponential Distribution
Normal Distribution and Z-Score
[Read more…]