Boeing has somehow managed to make the bad public relations created by those pesky onboard batteries catching fire in 2013 practically disappear. Not through good management. But through a never-ending series of disasters and catastrophes that shows no sign of letting up which is dominating Boeing’s news cycle that there is no remaining airtime for missteps like those battery fires.
[Read more…]Reliability in Emerging Technology
The only thing that doesn’t change is change itself. We are constantly exposed to new and better products, services that are more efficient, and things that generally make our lives better.
But how long will they work for? … and will they be safe?
And we often get it wrong. Toyota vehicles of the early 2000s had a problem with their new electronic throttle control system that saw them accelerate without warning – reliability was not the priority it needed to be. But autonomous vehicles are perhaps faced with an over-abundance of caution bordering on trepidation, meaning that the 95 per cent of road deaths caused by human error are still happening as the technology ‘drives unused.’ And then there are the new products that you either never hear of or can barely remember because they barely worked long enough for customers to enjoy. Budding entrepreneurs forget that there is a difference between time to market and time to market acceptance.
So what are we to do? The answer involves a healthy dose of historic ‘reliability-principles’ with a blend of tailored approaches that goes (well and truly) beyond a ‘checklist’ or ‘compliance’ approach. So how do we get that mix right? That is the question.
Leadership and the Failure of the Apple Car
Apple recently did something that it isn’t in the habit of doing. And that is – admitting failure. After spending $ 10 billion on ‘Project Titan’ whose aim was to produce a ‘really cool car,’ Apple decided to pull the pin and cancel it.
Simplifying Apple’s Project Titan ambitions to something as pithy as creating a ‘really cool car’ might seem a little condescending. The problem for Apple was that unfortunately, this was the practical truth. And that is why it failed.
[Read more…]Confidence is a Measure of You, Not Your Product
We like to think we make decisions based on information. We don’t. We make decisions based on emotions. And the most important emotion we rely upon for decision-making is confidence. We can be provided all the information in the world, but if we can’t understand it, trust it or believe it, we look for confidence in other ways. Often to disastrous outcomes.
The number of ‘well-funded’ production efforts full of ‘very smart people’ that routinely generate expensive but unreliable products is sadly, very high. And it all comes down to the wrong types of confidence that well-paid decision-makers chase.
[Read more…]No ‘Visionary’ Leaders? … Nowhere to Go
What does it mean to be a ‘visionary leader’? It starts with being different to most people. You can’t just become a visionary leader by completing a leadership course, being mentored by someone awesome, or by compiling an impressive curriculum vitae (although these can help people with the potential to become visionary leaders get there).
One of the first things that the then United States Army Chief of Staff (General George C. Marshall) did at the outbreak of World War II was to fire the majority of his officers who had climbed the ladder of military ranks throughout the previous 20 years of relative peace.
[Read more…]If it Ain’t Boeing, Are you Still Going?
Boeing is really having a bad stretch. Or more specifically, the passengers flying in its 737 MAX aircraft are.
Most recently a ‘plug’ flew off the side of Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane in flight, leaving a refrigerator sized hole next to startled (but mercifully still living) passengers. A ‘plug’ is a panel that seals up a hole in the fuselage that is included during manufacture to allow an optional emergency exit to be installed.
This failure is not a good look … especially for a three-month-old plane. Lots of manufacturers of different machines throughout history have been able to successfully bolt panels to cover holes of a similar size to that of an aircraft emergency exit. It is not hard to do. Nor is it hard to have systems in place to make sure it is done right.
[Read more…]What does Apple’s lightning cable, John Deere and the Mafia have in common?
Apple new iPhones will be somewhat different to those of the past. They will now have a USB-C charging and data port, and not Apple’s lightning cables. Why? Because the European Union said so. And they said so because they are not happy with the number of different charging cables we all now need for our various devices. Having a single cable that can charge an iPhone, Samsung smartphone, and virtually every other small electronic consumer product makes sense. It means fewer cables, smaller carbon footprints, less electronic waste, and prices will come down as less and less products assume that they need to provide a charging cable in their packaging. I have at least 20 power cables in my office that have been provided with various electronic gadgetry over the years.
[Read more…]Find Me the Statistics that I Like to Believe the Most …
It looks like 2023 will be the hottest year on record. Along with all the cyclones, hurricanes, floods and bushfires we have already had. Those who study and take climate change seriously unanimously agree that man-made changes to the environment are causing the climate to change so fast that mother nature will struggle to keep up.
And for the minority (yes, it is a minority as has been confirmed by many surveys and studies across the world), their arguments against climate change go something like this …
It might not be because of us …
… so it’s definitely not because of us.
[Read more…]The (Smaller) Carbon Footprints of Reliability Engineering
Climate change is universally accepted. And when I say ‘universally,’ I mean that the only people who think it is not a thing are fringe elements of society who are predisposed to specific interpretations of religion or commercial greed that would be harmed by any attack on fossil fuels and the energy we derive from them.
The good thing about this is that organizations who are serious about being successful and profitable can’t do so by sharing the ideology of a small minority. More and more people (including younger humans who will be the decision makers of tomorrow) are demanding more and more from the organizations they buy services and products from – especially when it comes to environmental concerns.
So to be successful, you need to take this stuff seriously.
[Read more…]Complex Processes Become your Product (not your Actual Product).
I was recently asked by a product design engineer why their organization struggles with reliability even though they have a very ‘robust’ design process that seemingly has lots of different ‘good’ reliability engineering activities embedded in it. And when I say ‘good’ reliability engineering activities, I mean activities that have (in the past) shown to have a really good impact on reliability.
When I looked at some of this engineer’s processes as summarized by a ‘process flow chart,’ the reason his organization struggled with making reliable products was quite obvious.
The process was so complex that it became the ‘product.’
[Read more…]Routine Things Risk Becoming Routine
One of my more unfortunate memories of my early military career is the death of a soldier on a training exercise. I was posted to a place very close to the equator … along with the heat and humidity that came with it. The soldier who died suffered from heat stroke, brought on by dehydration. And when we looked back on what went wrong, a key issue was that the training exercise risk assessment was ‘word for word’ identical to previous risk assessments when it came to managing heat related illnesses.
When people do right – does the right thing happen?
Organizations are all about ‘success.’ Being ‘successful.’ Which can many different things to many different people. ‘Success’ is not simply the ‘antithesis of failure.’ One could argue that ‘mediocrity’ in many cases is accepted as the antithesis of ‘failure.’ ‘Mediocrity’ is hardly the same as ‘success.’
Organizational success means that a lot of different people need to be doing lots of very different, but very important things. And this often means things that can go unnoticed. The ‘one percenters.’ Getting things done right the first time.
[Read more…]Reliability happens when you become impatient and selfish
I often start teaching my reliability engineering courses … by focusing on other reliability engineering courses. Why? Because they exemplify what is wrong with how most ‘reliability experts’ go about convincing others to take reliability seriously.
A typical reliability engineering course will start with images of disaster. A Chernobyl here. A Fukushima there. A crashed airplane. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Lots of other atrocities that happen when we don’t do reliability engineering properly.
Words (like ‘failure’) are important. But not as important as leadership.
I (like most of us) try to keep learning about stuff. And this includes (on occasion) listening to guys like Simon Sinek who has made a name for himself as an inspirational speaker and author. I learn a lot from some of his stuff. Most people like Simon are skilled at simplifying fundamentally ‘good’ ideas and principles into really simple messages that are easy to break through our sometimes cluttered brains.
How to Change Design Reviews from Tedious to Awesome
We’ve all been ‘there.’ Watching the ‘mechanical’ design team lead go through 378 PowerPoint slides of suffocating technical content, pixelated iPhone pictures of bearing housings, and lists of ‘open’ items in fonts that are too small. There are ‘senior’ engineers wheeled in to ‘review’ but instead nod knowingly and ask sporadic questions about something they once designed ‘back in the day.’ And the chairperson will often ask our ‘mechanical’ design team lead if they are ‘on track.’
‘Making’ and ‘checking’ reliability are very, very different
At the 2019 Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, I was involved in a discussion with US Department of Defense (DoD) reliability engineering teams and industry representatives. And on the agenda was a review of an emerging document called the ‘Reliability and Maintainability Engineering Management Body of Knowledge.’ Let’s call this the ‘DoD RAM BOK’ for short.
I only had access to this document’s quick reference guide, and it suggests that the DoD RAM BOK describes what reliability engineering activities need to happen from ‘concept’ through to ‘operations’ for a typical military capability being introduced into service.