Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
If you’ve ever participated on a project team considering the purchase of a major piece of equipment, you’ve almost certainly heard of “Payback Period” – the length of time projected to recoup an initial investment through cost savings, increase profits, etc. It’s fairly simple to calculate: [Read more…]
As a teenager, my father was a house painter. He started out as a “brush and roller guy”, climbing ladders and cutting in windows. But as his business grew, he caught the attention of commercial developers with large jobs like grocery store ceilings and outfield fences. These can’t be completed with old school tools; they require a sprayer.
I remember my dad walking me through his logic of whether or not to buy a commercial sprayer. I didn’t recognize it then, but he was explaining to me “Break-Even Analysis”. [Read more…]
[This is a companion article to “Using Design FMEAs to Identify Special Product Characteristics.” These two articles should be read in sequence.]
Identification and application of special product and process characteristics help to focus assembly and manufacturing processes on the most important areas, in order to achieve the right outcomes.
“Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding” – Brian Greene
When a new product development effort begins, we have a clear plan to get to completion. However, part way through we start feeling it is much harder than expected. If you have ever felt that way, this video will talk about some ideas that might make it easier. It will never be simple, but it can be much less painful. Having worked to resolve the highest technical risk on a large Army program, I know it can be achieved. [Read more…]
The deeper you drill into process capability analysis, the more you realize just how many capability indices are available. The two most common capability indices are Cpk and Ppk, and the closely related Cp, Cpu and Cpl, and Pp, Ppu and Ppl, respectively. Cpm is less commonly used, and has a unique way of accounting for the centeredness of a process within its specification limits. (See my past blog posts for extended discussions about all of these.) [Read more…]
Do you ever get frustrated with long Product Development processes? Why does it happen? Is it always this way? We have produced development speed records for multiple companies. There are principles for advancing technology but also finishing in a practical time. [Read more…]
People appreciate great leaders. What sets them apart? What characteristics can be applied and learned? Vague or high level descriptions do not help implement leadership for a team. This video provides practical considerations. [Read more…]
One of the more confusing distinctions for quality professionals, especially those working within one of the quality management standards such as IATF 16949 or ISO 13485, is the difference between a Corrective Action Request (CAR) and a Preventive Action Request (PAR). [Read more…]
As organizations focus more on data, the quality of data is important. But what does it mean? How do we know if we have it? This video provides some insights for understanding your data situation. [Read more…]
One of the most important principles in reliability engineering and management is the differentiation between the vital few and the trivial many. The application of special product characteristics uses that principle.
“The whole of science is nothing more than the refinement of thinking.” – Albert Einstein
Design of Experiments is a great approach for confident modeling of systems. It does have limitations. What are the limits? How can those be dealt with? How important is it for practical systems? [Read more…]
Metropolises in 2020, like New York and Shanghai, disconcertingly resembled London in 1831, in that a strange new disease passed through the population leaving in its wake confusion, grief and death. 2020 was beginning of Covid-19; 1831, Cholera. [Read more…]
Many organizations are using online meetings. With work from home being so popular, this is an important area to improve. How can they be used to be more effective? How can a leader make the most of the meeting, and the features available? Which options are best for a given situation? [Read more…]
When approaching design validation, what can make us increase our success rate? This video hits highlights of how we approach validation. [Read more…]
If you’ve worked around the fields of reliability or quality for any length of time, you’ve certainly encountered and have likely assembled the humble yet mighty histogram. This specialized bar graph is one of the most common starting points for analyzing continuous data. It not only portrays the frequency of numerical data across its range of values, but also provides hints at the data’s underlying probability distribution. [Read more…]