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Key Teaching Principle # 11: Prepare, Prepare, Prepare!

As covered in the first article in this series, Principles of Effective Teaching, reliability engineers, FMEA team leaders, and other quality and reliability professionals are often called upon to teach the principles of reliability or FMEA. Whether you are a student who wants to enhance your learning experience, an instructor who wants to improve teaching results, or an engineer who wishes to convey knowledge to another person, this series will offer practical knowledge and advice.

“Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.”   Confucius

Like any task in life, it is essential that instructors prepare well for each course being taught.

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Ten Things You Might Hear an Ineffective Reliability Professional Say

Ten Things You Might Hear an Ineffective Reliability Professional Say

A mid-level reliability engineer was disgusted, “Can you believe they didn’t ask me a single question? I knew they wouldn’t understand.” I have heard it so often that it inspired me to create the FINESSE fishbone diagram®. Improving our communication skills makes us better reliability professionals and respected trusted advisors. However, you will know an ineffective communicator by what they say. These are ten things you might hear an ineffective reliability professional say about senior management.

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DOE – what are you?

DOE – what are you?

The history of Design of Experiments (DOE) can be traced back to the work of various individuals, including Genichi Taguchi, a Japanese engineer and statistician. Taguchi made significant contributions to the field, particularly in the area of robust design, which aimed to improve the quality of products and processes. His work was influenced by the need for quality improvement in post-World War II Japan. Taguchi’s methodology, known as the Taguchi methods, was based on the concept of “robust parameter design,” which aimed to make processes and products insensitive to environmental factors or other variables that were difficult to control.

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Hybrid Project Management Methodology

Hybrid Project Management Methodology

Guest Post by John Ayers (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

A Hybrid Methodology combining the speed and flexibility of Agile and the structure of Waterfall is feasible and practical. I base my opinion on the research I have done. I recently presented a Webinar to Project Management Institute (PMI) members on how to merge Agile and Waterfall to achieve a Hybrid methodology. The focus of this paper is to address the greatest risk to a company in implementing the new methodology i.e., acceptance of it. I addressed how to accomplish the merger to achieve a Hybrid method in a paper I wrote and posted on LinkedIn in May.

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 KPIs are a Big Lie About Performance Improvement 

 KPIs are a Big Lie About Performance Improvement 

 It is a mockery to use business performance indicators to manage a company or department. Using the information that shows up on the management dashboards on your screen can wreck your company. Measuring a process does not put you in control of it. A process is totally self-controlled. You always get what the process gives you. Organizational processes work well or do not because of their design.1 A business process that cannot achieve its aims is the wrong design for its purpose.

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Reliability Analysis of life data with Multiple Failure Modes

Reliability Analysis of life data with Multiple Failure Modes

Dear friends, I am happy to release this video on reliability analysis of life data with multiple failure modes. The analysis procedure is illustrated fully in Minitab software with a real-life case study with six failure modes. The concept is that when a system fails for one failure mode at time t, this data of time is right censored data for other failure modes! Analysis in Minitab can be performed in one single command!

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Why don’t LED Lightbulbs last as long as they say they will?

Why don’t LED Lightbulbs last as long as they say they will?

Because the people that make them lie. 

Not ‘obvious’ lying where lightbulb manufacturers calculate one reliability number and deliberately choose to put another number on their lightbulb packaging. But ‘insidious’ lying where they deliberately choose to measure the wrong thing to get a better number.

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Six Ways Soft Skills Matter for Engineers and Technologists

Six Ways Soft Skills Matter for Engineers and Technologists

A professional colleague recently asked me how much technical knowledge someone should have before giving a presentation to senior management. My two-part answer was, “Twenty-five percent of what they know, and soft skills are as important as the facts they know.” Here’s six ways soft skills matter for engineers, technologists, and reliability professionals.

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Reliability Block Diagram Fundamentals

Reliability Block Diagram Fundamentals

Basic Definitions

  • Reliability: Ability to provide continuous and stable system/component function under defined operating conditions without failure(s).
  • Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF): Average expected time interval between failures. Often a measure of reliability.
    • Failure Rate is the expected no. of failures over a period of time. MTBF is the inverse of failure rate.
  • Availability: Percentage of time a system or component can perform its intended function without failure.   
    • Key aspects involve individual component reliability, system architecture, redundancy, and implementation of control strategies to ensure uninterrupted service. 
    • Availability = Uptime/(Total Operation Time) = MTBF/(MTBF+MTTR), MTTR is a measure of time to repair the system/component
    • For example, 99.999% (5-9’s of availability) -> 5 min downtime in one year
  • Reliability Block Diagram: Reliability Block Diagram (RBD) is a graphical representation used to model reliability in complex systems. Illustrates interconnections between various components or subsystems within a system.
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Lifetime Reliability Solutions Change To Win Workbook

Lifetime Reliability Solutions Change To Win Workbook

Change To Win Process

‘Change To Win’ is a structured change management program used to introduce needed changes, best practices and innovative improvements into an organisation. A ‘Change To Win’ team consisting of managers, supervisors and people from the workplace is assembled to implement the changes and is responsible to plan how the organisation will adopt the changes, to trial them and then implement them into standard practice.

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Asbestos Legacy in Canada

Asbestos Legacy in Canada

Guest Post by Bill Pomfret (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

20 years ago, I wrote extensively, and held a rally on Parliament hill regarding the two-faced Canadian Government and Asbestos. At that time, I had just visited India, where I witnessed Canadian Asbestos being unloaded from Vessels, with workers wearing only flip flops and loin cloths using large hooks to grab the bales.

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Fred’s Bicycles and Kaplan-Meier Error?

Fred’s Bicycles and Kaplan-Meier Error?

The Kaplan-Meier reliability estimator errs on Fred’s bicycle ships and failure data! The Kaplan-Meier estimate was computed from Fred’s bicycles’ grouped failure data in the body of a “Nevada” table. It disagrees with the reliability estimate from ships cohorts and monthly failures (without knowing which cohort the failures came from). It disagrees with least squares nonparametric reliability estimates. All but the Kaplan-Meier estimate agree! Which would you prefer?

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