Apex Ridge

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…]

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

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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…]

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

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.

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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.

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I just came back from one of the best RAMS conferences I have attended (In my over 10 years of attending).  I was fortunate enough to present a paper on “Balancing Reliability Goals in the Product Development Process”.  The questions I received were great!  The higher level management of how reliability integrates into product programs is the next big advancement for our discipline.

-Adam

 

The Titanic had two sister ships, the Britannic and the Olympic. There was a woman called Violet Jessop, a nurse and a cruise liner stewardess that worked on all three. (That’s her, to the right->)

1. The Olympic crashed into a warship whilst leaving harbor but was able to make it back.
2. She was on the Titanic as it sank and is referenced in the Titanic film, a stewardess that was told to set an example to the non english speaking passengers as the ship sank. She looked after a baby on lifeboat 16 until being rescued by the Carpathia the next day.
3. It’s not known what exactly caused the sinking of the Britannic but the lifeboats hit the water too early. As the ship sank, the rear listed up and a number of the lifeboats were sucked into the propellers. Violet had to jump out of the lifeboat she was in and sustained a serious head injury, but survived.

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Toyota just issued a recall of all 1993 Toyota Camrys. Tokyo-  “It’s simply time for drivers to move on.” Then added “We understand that the 1993 Camry was tremendously dependable, but, honestly, there’s just no excuse for driving a 24-year-old car at this point. You could have updated features like bluetooth and a backup camera” said Toyota spokesman Haruki Kinoshita. While Toyota is reportedly confining its recall to the 1993 Camry, it also issued a warning to owners of 1994 to 1998 models alerting them to the fact that they were really starting to push it.
I can’t take full credit for that joke.  But like most satire it is inspired by a reality. I actually just walked by this car in a parking lot a few hours ago. [Read more…]

The term “Physics of Failure” is used when referring to the underlying mechanism that has driven a failure mode.  I have issue with the words “Physics” in this phrase as a “catch all.”  This implies we are only working with physical or kinematic interactions when studying product wear-out. Wear-out failures are rooted in chemistry as well.  Most electronic failures are chemistry based.   If a failure can be tracked back to a material property change, dielectrics, brittleness, transformation (oxidation), strength loss based on property change without fatigue, we have a chemistry problem. Mechanical physics does not play a part in understanding the input and response relationship or assist with creating an accelerated life model in these cases.

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