Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
“When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large, scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible.” ― Albert Einstein
“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” – Niels Bohr* We have always had a quest to reduce future uncertainties and know what is going to happen to us, how long we will live, and what may impact our lives. Horoscopes, Tarot
Implementing a new reliability development paradigm in a company which is using traditional, standards-based testing can be a perilous journey.
It is especially true with introducing HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Test) in which strength against stress, and not quantifying electronics lifetimes is the new metric. Because of this significant change in test orientation, a critical factor for success begins with educating the company’s top [Read more…]
On occasion, you and the team sit down to review the design.
The idea is to check the design for any issues with the combined wisdom of the people involved. Or, it may be a status update for the entire team providing a focus on the most important issues and action items.
The review may involve all departments, such as marketing, operations, supplier management, and the design team.
It may involve just you and the electrical engineer in a private meeting. In either case, it is a review and a chance to illuminate salient reliability issues and form a consensus on the appropriate action. [Read more…]
Concurrent engineering is a common approach that pairs the development of the product design and it’s supporting manufacturing processes through the development process.
Design engineers may require the creation of new manufacturing processes to achieve specific material properties, component performance, or mechanical, electrical or software tolerances. [Read more…]
Adam and Fred discuss how one of the forgotten core functionalities of DFMEA is its contribution to successful project management.
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Next week is RAMS – the Reliability and Maintainability Symposium. A multitrack 3.5-day conference with classes, tutorials, paper sessions, a small trade show, plus many of you – peers, colleagues, and friends in the reliability world.
The conference is hosted by 9 professional societies and organized by a group of about 50 or so volunteers from those societies (I was an active member of the RAMS management committee for many years). [Read more…]
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…]
Just asking a customer how reliable they want your product often provokes an honest answer. The customer, and you most likely, do not want any failures.
Failures are troublesome or in some cases dangerous.
You and your customers realize that not every unit produced will operate over a long and useful life. There is some chance that something will fail. The definition of ‘some’ is often vague. [Read more…]
A common question concerns the warranty period.
How long should we, the manufacture guarantee that our product will work as expected? Do we include limitations or not? How do we decide? [Read more…]
As of January 22th, 2023 a simple Google search for the term “reliability” returns about 748 million results (up from 171 million in April 2017, 336 million in January 2022). For the term “reliability engineering” 253 million, up from 10.8 million in 2017.
Today, May 9th, 2025, I once again searched for the term “reliability” and the result could list about 703 million results, down alittle from two years ago. And for “relaibility engineering” there are about 229 million results. Still seems to be a popular set of terms to include on the web.
The term reliability is defined by the Oxford Languages as “the quality of being trustworthy or of performing consistently well”. This is broader than just the work we do in reliability engineering – so this resource page is our attempt to narrow down your search to help you find a shortlist of valuable resources.
Here you will find lists of blogs, books, consultants, degree programs, and more. If one of your favorite resources is missing, let us know. If you are having trouble finding exactly what you need to solve a program or learn, again let us know. [Read more…]
Why do so many avoid failure?
In product development of plant asset management, we are surrounded by people that steadfastly do not want to know about or talk about failures.
Failure does happen. Let’s not ignore this simple fact. [Read more…]
