Upon my son’s return from studying abroad for a semester, I asked him what he learned. He said there are a lot of smart people in the world.
I concur. [Read more…]
What I’ve Learned from You
Overview of Reliability Engineering
An Overview of Reliability Engineering Tasks and Application from a Product Design and Plant Operation Perspective
A Guest Post by Lennox Bennett
Abstract / Summary
In deciding what industry you want to work as a reliability engineer, it is always good to have an understanding of what functional responsibilities you are expected to execute as a part of the job function.
You should always carefully review the job description then compare your knowledge acquired through training and on-the-job experience and ask yourself if you are capable of performing functions required without additional training.
Furthermore, we need to consider our technical limitations and at the same time be aware that the job description provided may not exclusive represents all the tasks you are expected to perform. [Read more…]
Reliability Management & Risk
What is reliability management? Reliability Engineering? Would a product design or an organization benefit with a focus on reliability management and engineering? What is the value of a focus on reliability?
Any organization, that develops and produces products, has resource limits. It may be talent, capabilities, time, funding, or some combination of these.
Yet, the goal to create a product that meets customer expectations includes the concept of product reliability. The product should provide the expected functions over time, without failure. This expected product reliability occurs, even if the design requirements and advertising do not explicitly mention product reliability. [Read more…]
10 Ways to Find Reliability Value
Most everyone agrees that improving a product or process reliability is a good thing. It’s good for customers, factories, and our business. And sometimes it’s difficult to answer the question,
‘What is the value of that reliability activity?’
What if your boss asks you what value you provide to the organization? Your answer may to harder to compose than you think.
How would you quantify your skills, experience, and knowledge and your role within the complex formal and informal working environments? [Read more…]
5 Steps to Building a Reliability Culture
Reliability is not the sole responsibility of the reliability engineer but results from nearly everyone in an organization making decisions that move toward the desired product reliability performance.
As a reliability professional, I often find it necessary to explore ways to leverage my knowledge of these areas to change the culture within an organization to create a sustainable program that achieves reliable products time and again. [Read more…]
Do Your KPIs Adversely Impact Reliability?
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable values related to essential business objectives.
A KPI provides a means to monitor the performance of a specific function.
In larger organizations, with sales & marketing, research & development, operations, supply chain and other teams working to bring products to market, each department has a specific role. [Read more…]
Is there a right number of reliability engineers?
None, actually.
Or, one really good reliability engineering professional.
Or, an entire staff of highly talented reliability engineers.
The number of reliability engineers on staff really doesn’t matter. The outcome of your product and system reliability is not contingent on headcount or office space or list of degrees. [Read more…]
What is the Link between Reliability and Brand?
In short, you probably do, better reliability performance the better the brand image.
When I’m making a purchase I prefer to buy items that I either have personal experience work well over time (reliable) or have many comments and reviews noting the durability.
As a reliability engineer, I am often asked what kind of car I drive (a Toyota Highlander, if must know). Reliability does matter -not only to me- it matters for many making a buying decision.
When a product’s actual reliability performance exceeds the customers expected reliability performance, the customer may consider the product reliable. This experience builds and when supported by other experiences from the same brand, increases brand equity. High brand equity permits a price premium, increased brand loyalty, and increased positive word of mouth support. [Read more…]
Supplier Reliability Program Maturity
It was late Friday afternoon and the phone rang. Which is rarely a good thing.
There seems to a significant spike in field failures due to one component. The initial failure analysis work reveals the issue started with a batch of parts received about two months ago and the flaw continues to appear in subsequent batches. [Read more…]
How to Be Deliberately Proactive
It is not enough to simply state your organization has a proactive stance concerning reliability. It more than running a few tests or thinking about reliability before the product ships or the equipment is installed.
It is a way of doing business.
The Meaning of a Failure
Every failure provides information. It provides time to failure, stress strength relationship, process stability and design margin types of information. In every case. Even failures directly related to human error.
A hardware intermittent failure observed by a firmware engineer should not be dismissed. Rather recorded, explored and examined.
A single intermittent failure, or glitch, may indicate nothing other than just a totally random glitch, or a design error that degrades over time causing 50% of units to fail in first three months.
3 Supply Chain Caused Failures
Some days are better than others. We sometimes run into failure when working to create a new product. With a little investigation we suspect the components are not working as expected.
We’ll call the vendor and ask for an explanation. If this is normal production and variability of performance, our product will suffer an higher than expected failure rate. The vendor will assure us with:
- It must have been damaged during assembly or use by us.
- It was a very rare manufacturing mistake and won’t happen again.
- We haven’t seen this before and you’re the first to report such an issue.
- We know about this issue and it’s been resolved in our process.
- Must have been an ESD (electrostatic discharge) event.
Not helpful. [Read more…]
The Want of Modern Customer Service
Reliability and Customer Service
As reliability professionals know, products fail. They fail for a wide range of reasons and over a broad span of time. We know it happens.
This doesn’t help when it impacts us directly though. When we purchase a product or service, it should just work. We know the odds, we know better, yet the sting of failure remains.
Customer Service provides a range of services, one of which is helping customers receive the benefit of their purchase. We call customer service to report a failure and expect their help making it right. [Read more…]
Minimize Supply Chain Failure Causes
What happens when a product you produce fails? You customer may call and return the product. They may expect you to provide a replacement or refund.
Does it matter if the failure was due to a capacitor or motor that you didn’t design, just purchased?
No.
Does it matter if a supplier’s supplier made an error that directly lead to the failure?
No.
You customer experienced a failure and since the purchase was from you, you are expected to make it right.
Steps to Improve Supplier Reliability
Situation
It’s Friday afternoon and the phone rings. It is another customer complaining about your product not working. This is the fifth call this afternoon. Something is wrong and you’re responsible for making it right.
The natural failure analysis process starts across your team. Gather information, determine the scope of the issue, work to understand the root causes, and implement an appropriate solution. This may involve stopping production, halting shipments, or even a product recall.
Initially, you just have more irate customer calls than a typical Friday afternoon. [Read more…]
