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Innovative Thinking in Reliability and Durability

I ,Baldev (call me Dev) Raheja, apply creative thinking through training and brainstorming in cross-functional teams. Some improvements are so innovative, they cost little or nothing but their ROI (return on investment) is at least 1,000%, and as much as 10,000%. This approach allowed me to rescue a power transformer manufacturing company from going out of business. Our reliability improvement was so high; we gave 15-year warranty to power companies in 1975 when no one in the world gave more than one-year warranty. You will gain lot of innovative learning from these articles.

Dev

Death of a Reliability Engineer

(Reproduced from the article “Death of a Reliability Engineer” by Dev Raheja, Reliability Review, Vol. 30, March 2010 with permission)

When I first wrote the article in March 1990, I implied an ‘F’ grade to reliability engineers. Now almost 20 years later, I would give them a “E’. Yes, there is a little improvement but nothing you can write to your mother about.

The MTBF cancer was wide spread and is still wide spread in the DoD. The only reason I upgraded the reliability engineer from F to E is because the MTBF in some industries is no longer used such as in the automotive industry. They use the failure rates instead to hide their shame.

Failure rate is just the reciprocal of MTBF. Good job! Same old corn flakes with a new product name! [Read more…]