on Product Reliability

A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:

Kirk Grey — Accelerated Reliability series
Les Warrington — Achieving the Benefits of Reliability series
Adam Bahret — Apex Ridge series
Fred Schenkelberg — Musings on Reliability and Maintenance series

Reliability in the Business Case

The challenges of keeping reliability at the resource and schedule negotiating table mid-program can be greatly helped by a solid effort to connect it to the business case when the product program is created.

It’s the ambiguity of how reliability makes the company money that makes the case in live negotiation so difficult. Everyone knows that reliability affects sales, marketing, warranty expense, future development. But how do you compare that to the urgency of time to market or cost point? If you, as the reliability representative, can point to a specific quantitative connection made to the business case for the product you have one.

[Read more…]

by Kirk Gray Leave a Comment

Will reparable designs help reduce electronics waste?

Another one bites the dust!

Apparently, my lovely wife is one of the best at finding stress testing limits of kitchen blenders, or we are unlucky at getting blenders that had some latent defect. She has discovered the destruct limit of 3 blenders within months of use. She does not do in the formal HALT methodology, as they break in what most would consider normal use conditions. It may have been a valid HALT evaluation if she had started with soft or easy to blend materials, starting with o ice or nuts and measured the time to reach its destruct limit. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Road Rally

So I wrote about how Mercedes has crummy reliability per Consumer Reports. I then threw a zinger at the end of the article saying I do have a Mercedes in the stable. So here is moment in time with her before we put her away for the winter last year. You will see the love/hate bloom and a benchmark with a 40 year old Japanese car. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Leading Reliability

Leading reliability efforts is a hard road. The resource required to improve reliability is significant. The resource to demonstrate reliability is gargantuan.

[Read more…]

by Adam Bahret 2 Comments

What is Mercedes Doing !!!

Mercedes used to be known for their outstanding reliability. They were the benchmark for 80 years ,no exageration. The new CLA250 model which is their base model has a reliability that is 140% less than the average rated car. What??? [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Reliability and Availability Modeling in Practice

By Kishor S. Trivedi

Kishor forward the link to the recording to me and suggest it may of interest to the Accendo Reliability community. I agree. He does a great job discussing the topic and a clear and practical manner.

The video abstract is:

IEEE Life Fellow and Hudson Chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University Prof. Kishor S. Trivedi visited Alibaba’s Hangzhou campus on Dec. 8th and talked about technical systems’ reliability and availability assurance methods based on probabilistic models. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Demonstrating Confidence

There are a few ways to demonstrate statistical confidence in reliability of a design. Each has it reasons for selection. here are three of my favorites [Read more…]

by Les Warrington Leave a Comment

Reliability Belt Program Delivers the Tools You Need

Develop your skills – learn the tools and where to apply them

OK, let’s admit it. We don’t always make the best decisions. And of course, those around us don’t either. And yet, to deliver a product with all the best features to a customer or market, at a competitive price and in time to make the sale, and that also will have good reliability and long life, requires everyone to make the right decisions in a timely fashion all along the way. It doesn’t take many adverse decisions to introduce field issues, increase warranty claims and lessen product life.

Reliability management and engineering is all about using the best tools to guide our decision-making. Becoming a good reliability engineer, or decision-maker of any kind, is about learning those tools – including when and where to use them.

[Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Product Derivatives for Market Domination

I recently came across this announcement that HP is going to develop computer systems and peripheral devices that are optimized for environments where they are cleaned frequently, often medical environments. In the medical and scientific fields cleaning solutions are a significant stress for plastics, inks and touch control surfaces. It’s a smart strategy to evaluate where your products are used and optimize your test use cases. It most often will lead to more accurate test results and reliability projections. It may, as well, lead to a market opportunity that was previously unknown, and if you are the first among your competitors to acknowledge this need and create a specialized or derivative product you now grabbed a portion of the market that you may have not previously held.

A few others

laptops that are impact and dirt resistant
Kids winter coats with glove attachments
Sport tuned models of economy cars
Stackable chairs
Folding bikes
Standing desks

-Adam

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

The Changing Support for a Reliability Engineer

In most organizations being a reliability engineer is a lonely position. I like to think we’re so effective that one or just a small team is all any organization needs.

As with any engineering position, we have specialized training and skills. We view the world and problems just a little differently then others. Then we use statistics, which tends to future isolate us from our peers.

For over 50 years there have been professional societies focused on supporting the professional education of reliability engineers. For nearly as long there have been trade journals and newsletters. Longer for technical journals and other scientific and engineering organizations and journals. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Having to Compromise Nothing

I was asked “Do you know about Singularity design?” I hadn’t heard the term in that context before.

It’s the concept of not approaching design from multiple disciplines. The design process is done with an approach and knowledge base of all needed disciplines at once and in conjunction. The electrical system isn’t designed by an electrical team and the mechanical by a mechanical team. The “Design Team” designs both simultaneously. Team members knowledge might be rooted in one discipline but there is clearly no boundary to their knowledge of other disciplines. This would be a mechanical engineer who has designed a PC board before.

[Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Reliability vs Cost

Intuitively, the emphasis in reliability to achieve a reduction in warranty and in-service costs results in some minimal increase in development and manufacturing costs. However, use of the proper techniques during the proper life cycle phase will help to minimize total life cycle cost (LCC).

To minimize total LCC, your organization should do two things:

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

The Value of Making Better Decisions

We make decisions every day. Our project teams and organizations have many individuals making decisions every day. Most of these decisions have little to do with product reliability, yet a surprising number of design, marketing, production, and customer care decisions that have a direct impact on product reliability performance.

As a reliability professional, do you work to make better decisions? Do you work to enable the individuals designing, producing, marketing, etc your organization’s products to make better decisions concerning reliability?

If not, why?

Let’s outline a few ways to estimate the value to you and your organization to improve decision making concerning reliability. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Miami Kicked My Butt

The Plan: Saturday and Sunday was skiing in Vermont with the family, back Sunday night, everyone off to school Monday morning, then to the airport to get to Miami, Tuesday and Wed meetings down there, then fly out Wed night so I’m back to teach classes Thur and Fri here in Boston. Easy Peesie!

Actual: Finish ski trip feel a little “strange” on flight down to Miami, slight chills. Tuesday do meetings just barely, Tuesday night it hits like a freight train, The Flu, or Malaria, Aliens. On Wednesday the freight train had fully passed over me so it stopped and spent Wed backing up over me again. Thursday it went forward again over a pile of human jello. I’m not flying out for the clases on Thur and Fri, or anytime soon for that matter. Just getting home is my mission for the week.

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

Should I Become a CRL, CMRP, or CRE?

What is the Career Benefit of Becoming a CRL, CMRP, or CRE?

Education. Knowledge. Motivation.

Sitting for a professional society’s reliability certification is a common goal among engineers in our field. Is there a career benefit? I’m not sure the certification provides the benefit. I think it is the work toward certification and the application of the required knowledge that provides the benefit.

[Read more…]