Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

  • Home
  • About
    • Contributors
  • Reliability.fm
    • Speaking Of Reliability
    • Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast
    • Quality during Design
    • Critical Talks
    • Dare to Know
    • Maintenance Disrupted
    • Metal Conversations
    • The Leadership Connection
    • Practical Reliability Podcast
    • Reliability Matters
    • Reliability it Matters
    • Maintenance Mavericks Podcast
    • Women in Maintenance
    • Accendo Reliability Webinar Series
    • Asset Reliability @ Work
  • Articles
    • CRE Preparation Notes
    • on Leadership & Career
      • Advanced Engineering Culture
      • Engineering Leadership
      • Managing in the 2000s
      • Product Development and Process Improvement
    • on Maintenance Reliability
      • Aasan Asset Management
      • CMMS and Reliability
      • Conscious Asset
      • EAM & CMMS
      • Everyday RCM
      • History of Maintenance Management
      • Life Cycle Asset Management
      • Maintenance and Reliability
      • Maintenance Management
      • Plant Maintenance
      • Process Plant Reliability Engineering
      • ReliabilityXperience
      • RCM Blitz®
      • Rob’s Reliability Project
      • The Intelligent Transformer Blog
    • on Product Reliability
      • Accelerated Reliability
      • Achieving the Benefits of Reliability
      • Apex Ridge
      • Metals Engineering and Product Reliability
      • Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics
      • Product Validation
      • Reliability Engineering Insights
      • Reliability in Emerging Technology
    • on Risk & Safety
      • CERM® Risk Insights
      • Equipment Risk and Reliability in Downhole Applications
      • Operational Risk Process Safety
    • on Systems Thinking
      • Communicating with FINESSE
      • The RCA
    • on Tools & Techniques
      • Big Data & Analytics
      • Experimental Design for NPD
      • Innovative Thinking in Reliability and Durability
      • Inside and Beyond HALT
      • Inside FMEA
      • Integral Concepts
      • Learning from Failures
      • Progress in Field Reliability?
      • Reliability Engineering Using Python
      • Reliability Reflections
      • Testing 1 2 3
      • The Manufacturing Academy
  • eBooks
    • Reliability Engineering Management DRAFT
  • Resources
    • Accendo Authors
    • FMEA Resources
    • Feed Forward Publications
    • Openings
    • Books
    • Webinars
    • Journals
    • Higher Education
    • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • 14 Ways to Acquire Reliability Engineering Knowledge
    • Reliability Analysis Methods online course
    • Measurement System Assessment
    • SPC-Process Capability Course
    • Design of Experiments
    • Foundations of RCM online course
    • Quality during Design Journey
    • Reliability Engineering Statistics
    • An Introduction to Reliability Engineering
    • An Introduction to Quality Engineering
    • Process Capability Analysis course
    • Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process course
    • Return on Investment online course
    • CRE Preparation Online Course
    • Quondam Courses
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Live Events
  • Calendar
    • Call for Papers Listing
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Calendar
  • Login
    • Member Home

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Reliability Program of One

Reliability Program of One

All Reliability Tasks

Having been invited to evaluate reliability practices within a company, I conducted a series of interviews with various staff members. When asked any question on the reliability techniques used, members of the engineering, procurement, operations, and quality departments all responded with nearly the same comment: “Oh, the reliability guy does that.” It appeared that the organization had one reliability engineer who did everything related to reliability. His interview was scheduled last that day. I was looking forward to meeting him.

The sole reliability engineer supported three design teams working on similar products. He set the reliability goals, worked out the apportionment, calculated the derating and safety factors on most elements of the design, worked with vendors to secure parts for accelerated life testing, conducted HALTs and a range of environmental testing, established any testing related to reliability for the manufacturing team, and monitored field issues, failure analysis, warranty estimates, and other aspects. He was working long days and was often unable to address all the issues that arose. He knew reliability engineering but did not have time to conduct all the tasks necessary to help produce reliable products.

He and I agreed that this situation this was neither sustainable nor beneficial to the rest of the team. Although he felt valuable and sought after by nearly everyone in the organization, the expectation was that he would do everything related to reliability. We agreed that many of the engineers and managers within the organization had the capability to take on most of the reliability work. They just needed to know how. He then sighed, lamenting the fact that one more time-intensive task had just been added to his day.

We talked about ways to facilitate this transition. I talked to the engineering and operations managers and they agreed they needed to spread out the work and that many of the tasks would be best done by their engineer once they learned a little more about reliability engineering.

About a month later I heard that the reliability engineer had left the group to take a new position. We talked briefly and he said that the former team meant well but never found time to learn or take on any tasks, citing the need to get the product out. “Could you do it this one time?” had become the common repetitive request. Nothing really changed. When he left he took the entire reliability program with him.

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: team

« Second Five Questions
Third Five Questions »

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Article by Fred Schenkelberg
in the Musings series

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about articles and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Recent Articles

  • History Repeats Itself: Buncefield, Puerto Rico, Jaipur
  • How Reliability Engineers Can Improve Their Communication in Information Sessions
  • FMEA Detection Risk: Insights and Advices
  • How to Structure Your ERM System
  • Rate of Occurrence of Failure

© 2023 FMS Reliability · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Cookies Policy

This site uses cookies to give you a better experience, analyze site traffic, and gain insight to products or offers that may interest you. By continuing, you consent to the use of cookies. Learn how we use cookies, how they work, and how to set your browser preferences by reading our Cookies Policy.