Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
When you think of maintenance, what do you think of?
This episode will dissect the difference between Maintenance, Reliability, and Asset Management.
By understanding the difference between Maintenance, Reliability and its relation to Asset Management, you can change and guide the perception of Maintenance and the value it brings to the organization.
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Guest Post by Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
As the world approaches 7 billion in population this year, there is an ever-increasing demand for food, energy and a voice in how things are run. How do these changes affect business continuity planners, you may be asking?
The simple answer is, they will have far-reaching effects on how business continuity planning is conducted.
No longer can we be satisfied with the assurance that our “hot site” is available, or that we can maintain business operations in the face of a pandemic; or that we can deal with the aftermath of a natural disaster. [Read more…]
Every product and process has built into it elements that impact the safety, quality and reliability performance.
These features will always be present whether deliberately crafted or not. [Read more…]
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This discussion draws on over 150 reliability program assessments. Let’s discuss the findings, key lessons, and best practices.
Let’s start the discussion on how to think about improving your reliability programs both at the specific project and across the organization.
Thinking about the value of each task and how it will benefit achieving personal, business, and customer objectives are key.
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As 12%* of the CRE exam, this is a major section, yet not a very difficult one. There are three basic areas:
If you’ve ever needed to secure funding or samples for a reliability test or had to respond to customer field returns, then you probably already understand the value of reliability.
In some businesses, product reliability is critical to the product’s success. Some businesses strive to be the leading ‘reliable’ producer in the market. [Read more…]
by Life Cycle Engineering
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Andrew is joined by Peter Durrant, an adjunct principal at Covaris, specializing in education and change management. Peter’s journey traces back to his days as a Navy apprentice, leading to his current role at Covaris, where he focuses on efficient maintenance planning and scheduling. With a passion for empowering others, Peter’s approach involves identifying areas for improvement while highlighting existing strengths. His insights on timing underscore the delicate balance between patience and proactivity.
Reflecting on his past, Peter’s experiences in submarines reveal his transformation from a spirited young man to a disciplined professional shaped by the challenges of submarine life. Despite his initial mischievousness, Peter embraced his responsibilities in the deep sea.
Sharing anecdotes from his submarine days, Peter offers a glimpse into the demanding world of underwater navigation, where every action carries immense significance. Explore the tale of Peter Durrant’s professional evolution, from his naval origins to his current role in industrial consultancy, in this engaging debut episode of the Reliability Hero Podcast.
In this episode of the Reliability Hero podcast, host Andrew Daddo speaks with Peter Durant, an adjunct principal education and change management with Covaris, a maintenance practitioner thriving in the Australian industry.
The podcast features an insightful conversation on the importance of timing when it comes to generating new ideas, how to identify opportunities for improvement, and how to focus on what matters to give a return on investment. Peter shares his exceptional career journey, from starting as an apprentice in the Navy to becoming an electrical engineer and a consultant.
The conversation is an interesting mix of personal anecdotes and professional insights that is sure to captivate listeners.
Many companies, especially for high-complexity products such as energy storage and robotics, are moving away from outsourced manufacturing to establish their own internal operations. In fact, Kearney’s 10th Annual Reshoring Index finds that reshoring has substantially increased during the past decade.
This paradigm shift, driven by the need for closer design and production integration, poses opportunities and challenges. This article delves into the essential steps and considerations to set up an effective internal manufacturing facility tailored for the hardware-based product industry.
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When you do a Root Cause Failure Analysis or a 5- Why there are no promises that you will actually find the true root cause and fix your problem. Investigating the cause of a failure is fraught with traps, such as making wrong assumptions, insufficient evidence, misinterpreting the evidence, misunderstanding, personal bias and second-guessing. There are necessary issues you need to be aware of that affect the RCA and 5-Why methods, and there are some good practices that you can adopt to improve your chance of doing a successful analysis when applied to equipment failures.
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In the span of our idea-to-scale series, we’ve navigated through the various phases of transforming a hardware-based product idea into a market-ready product. We’ve explored the crucial stages of design, planning, development, as well as controlled introduction. Now, we arrive at the pivotal point of Volume Manufacturing, where we will learn how it can be leveraged to increase efficiency, improve quality and lower costs to effectively scale your business.
In this final segment, we turn our focus to scaling a resilient supply chain and revisiting key concepts from earlier segments. These include Contract Manufacturer (CM) selection, tooling and fixturing, communication, and business systems. We’ll also include additional insights into production forecasting, test, and logistics and repair, with a focus on quality, delivery and cost-effectiveness.
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Dianna Deeney interviews Keven Wang from UnitX. Keven shared valuable insights about how AI-powered quality control is revolutionizing factories worldwide, beyond inspection. With over 160 customers benefiting from this technology, Wang’s expertise offers a glimpse into both the present capabilities and future potential of AI in manufacturing.
This interview is part of our series, “A Chat with Cross Functional Experts”. Our focus is speaking with people that are typically part of a cross-functional team within engineering projects.
Keven Wang is the Co-Founder & CEO of UnitX, a leading AI Robotics company automating visual inspection in factories. Keven graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Computer Science concentrating on AI. He has visited 135+ manufactures worldwide helping to improve yield and quality, and holds patents in AI
technology for visual inspection.
Perhaps most surprising is Kevin’s observation that the greatest challenge in AI adoption isn’t technical but human—aligning teams, establishing shared goals, and helping personnel become comfortable with the technology. This insight underscores that successful implementation requires thoughtful change management alongside technical expertise.
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In the last blog, we discussed how to navigate the various mechanical tooling options and the advantages and trade-offs for volume production. We learned that considering factors such as lead times, cost, quality, and control over development processes is essential to selecting the most appropriate tooling option tailored to your specific product requirements.
Now, let’s continue to our next blog series, which will focus on business systems. Business systems are critical for supporting agile product realization, optimizing your processes, meeting regulatory compliance, and scaling your business. So let’s explore business systems strategies, flows, usage throughout the product life cycle, and tips for success.
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Article by Mike Freier
In the last blog post, we discussed how to validate your product and cover some of the important testing that your engineering teams should plan on to ensure your product meets all the requirements outlined in the engineering design specification.
Transitioning from engineering and beta units to high volume production involves finding a contract manufacturer (CM) as well as sub-tier volume suppliers, signing a deal with the CM, and handing off the set of data and instructions to make your product. Read on to learn what to lookout for in each step in the process of scaling your product into volume manufacturing.
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This paper is primarily on understanding how to get extraordinary equipment reliability. The paper explains where equipment failures start in organisations. It clarifies the need to recognise the effect, and to control the influence, of interacting processes across the life cycle. It explains the successful philosophies and practices used in high reliability organisations and it introduces a reliability-causing methodology to help companies find what to do to become high-reliability organisations.
