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QDD 117 QDD Redux: Choose Reliability Goals for Modules

QDD Redux: Choose Reliability Goals for Modules

We have a reliability target for our system. But we’re not meeting it.

To avoid this scenario, what is something we can do in early development?

When we’re figuring out our concept, we can better learn about our options. We can work with Reliability Engineers to understand what we know, the risk in what we don’t know, and to prioritize reliability of the modules to be able to meet the reliability of our whole system.

We talk about using reliability allocation to help us choose reliability goals for modules of our product design. And we talk about its limitations.

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by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

10 Reasons to Do Reliability

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

Everyone ‘knows’ why we do reliability engineering … right? Customer experience. Organization reputation. Reduced warranty claims ten years from now. But these are boring reasons that really don’t motivate me to take reliability seriously now. Why should I invest so much time into an activity that benefits the ‘company’ or the ‘customer’ in the future but won’t make an immediate difference when my boss gives me a ‘gold star’ on my next performance appraisal? Besides, no one person is responsible for reliability, so any effort I invest in reliability will be ‘lost in the noise’ anyway. And, of course, reliability will increase the budget and schedule today. Right? [Read more…]

by Christopher Jackson 6 Comments

What is ‘Supportability’ and How Does it Relate to Reliability?

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

What is supportability? Is it working out how many spare parts you will need (and when)? No. Is it working out how many maintainers or technicians you will need to keep your system working? Still no. What about working out what tools these maintainers or technicians need? No again. But many people think that this is what ‘supportability’ is. ‘Supportability’ is actually a characteristic of your product or system. Is the ‘ability’ for it to be ‘supported.’ And this can mean different things in different scenarios. It is also not a ‘number.’ If you have two comparable systems, but one needs fewer spare parts, is easier to maintain, needs fewer tools, has lots of sensors that give plenty of warning for maintenance, and so on … then it might be more supportable. But the main thing you need to ‘think about’ regarding supportability is that because it is a characteristic of a product or system … it has to be baked INTO the design. Want to learn more about how to do this? Join us for this webinar.
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by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

What is Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT)?

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

Some of you have heard of HALT (and I don’t mean someone asking you to stop). HALT is a very powerful form of testing that really helps us improve the robustness and reliability of new products. So what is HALT? HALT is a targeted test strategy to stress your amazing new product to (and beyond) its limits. Which means HALT will break your product (or prototype). Over and over again. Some people ask ‘so what … of course it was going to break when you pushed it that hard?’ But there is a method to this madness. And many organizations have used HALT to create amazing new products that are robust and reliable very quickly (with competitors struggling to understand why). Want to learn more? See you at this webinar!
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by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

What is Accelerated Life Testing or ALT?

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

Sounds simple … right? We simply test faster! Great! But what does this get us? Many organizations are faced with a dilemma when it comes to testing to MEASURE reliability. If we test an amazing new product in ‘at use’ conditions, it might take many years before it will fail. This is time we simply don’t have when it comes to product development. So, how do we test faster? One of the more obvious answers is to increase the stress. Turn the temperature up. Increase the vibration. Use more voltage. But how do we get this right? How can we know that (for example) one week of accelerated testing is equivalent to 10 years of actual use? This webinar will help introduce you to the idea of Accelerated Life Testing, or ALT, to help you and your organization make reliability testing a reality.
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by Dianna Deeney Leave a Comment

QDD 088 Choose Reliability Goals for Modules

Choose Reliability Goals for Modules

We have a reliability target for our system. But we’re not meeting it.

To avoid this scenario, what is something we can do in early development?

We talk about using reliability allocation to help us choose reliability goals for modules of our product design. And we talk about its limitations.

[Read more…]

by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

Why Redundant Systems Aren’t Always Redundant

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

Redundancy has continually proven not always to be redundant. Whether the Fukushima nuclear power plant or United Airlines Flight 232, additional components or subsystems that are supposed to take over when others have failed don’t always work. Why is that? There are quite a few reasons … many of which we already know about. But time and time again, otherwise, smart people choose to ignore what we know about how to REALLY make things redundant in order to save costs, save thinking, or otherwise confuse efforts with outcomes. In this webinar, we will look at how redundancy is described in textbooks … and how it can go wrong in the real world.
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by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

What is the Weibull Distribution?

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

Whether new to reliability or a veteran, you have probably heard about the Weibull distribution. It has almost mythical status amongst those who conduct reliability data analysis … or in other words – turning a jumble of dots (data points) into information that actually means something. So why do we ‘worship’ the Weibull distribution? What is so special about it? Whether you have been doing this for a long time or five minutes, you will get something out of this webinar that looks at one of the most popular tools for reliability analysis.
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by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

What is a ‘Fault Tree’?

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

If you have spent any time doing reliability engineering stuff, you will probably have heard of this thing called a ‘fault tree.’ You may have even used fault trees a lot. But it is amazing how many different reliability engineers have different ideas about how to use a fault tree best. Some think fault trees are strictly used to work out which combinations of components need to fail for the system to fail (system reliability modeling). Others think fault trees are really useful for helping us work out what the causes of failure are (root cause analysis). Both people are right. So why do we get these competing schools of thought? Join us for this webinar to learn more about how fault trees can help you … regardless of what you are trying to achieve.
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by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

What do you see in a ‘Probability’ Plot?

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

Some of you might have heard about probability plots … like Weibull plots. Some of you might not. A Weibull plot is a really useful way of quickly ‘looking’ at data and being able to ‘see’ really useful things. This could be seeing that a system’s failure rate is decreasing over time … which usually means there are manufacturing defects. It could be seeing that the rate of failure of a system is increasing over time … which means the system is accumulating damage or wearing out. And lots of other things. So, let’s look at a different sort of ‘probability’ plot … and see what we can work out from it. And that means working out what we need to do to improve reliability. Join this webinar if you want to learn how to see really useful things in lines that you might not have appreciated in the past.
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by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

Confidence in Reliability

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

Reliability is a measure of your product or system. Confidence is a measure of you. But we often forget this. We often subject our new product, system, or service to test after test until it reaches this thing called ‘required statistical confidence.’ But this is often an illusion, which is great! Because if statistical confidence is often not ‘real’ confidence, then we don’t always have to resort to statistics to get confidence. In fact, those of us who exclusively rely on statistics are usually those who lack confidence in the product, system or service and need a security blanket to make them feel OK. This webinar talks about confidence from the perspective of the ‘process owner.’ The design team lead. The CTO. The junior engineer. And how you can get a much healthier version of confidence through the way we design and produce our ‘things’ so that when it comes time to test … we are (justifiably) supremely confident that we will absolutely dominate whatever statistical testing hurdle can be thrown our way. And this sometimes means we don’t need to deal with statistics at all!
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by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

Product Reliability: Selection and Control

In a recent Accendo podcast, Chris Jackson and Fred Schenkelberg discussed who is responsible for producing a reliable product, which included designers and suppliers. I’m going to weigh in.

The reliability of any product depends on the reliability of the individual components and joints within the product. That is, the ability of the components and joints to withstand exposure to stressors without degrading to the point that they fail, resulting in the product no longer performing as required. Stressors, which include corrosion conditions, fatigue, and wear, were discussed in an earlier article.

Whether individual components and joints have the reliability required boils down to two basic aspects of engineering – selection and control. The appropriate form (i.e. shape, dimensions, features) and materials for components and joints must be selected during product design. Then, systems must be put in place to control fabrication of components and joints, ensuring their form and materials are as specified. This will enable the components and joints to consistently meet performance and reliability requirements.

So, who’s responsible for this selection and control?

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by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

How to Take the Guess Work out of Expert Judgment

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

Most humans can be quite technically minded. And sometimes we aren’t. Sometimes, we expect every drug or medical procedure to be checked, approved, validated, and tested on other people (et cetera) before subjecting ourselves to whatever our doctor suggests. At other times, we spend lots of money at casinos (note that I said ‘spend’ and not ‘invest’ or ‘win’). When it comes to reliability, we can sometimes be too technically minded. A reliability ‘number’ might not exist until our product has undergone exhaustive testing. Which can often be two years too late to do anything about if it turns out it doesn’t meet all our reliability dreams. So what can we do? Well … why spend money trying to generate information (through lengthy tests) when you can use the information stored in everyone’s brain? The most common answer (even if we don’t want to admit it) is that this sounds like guesswork. And guesswork can sound unprofessional. Or it’s just wrong. But there are ways you can suck out information from a group of experts in a quantifiable and remarkably accurate way. Want to learn more? This webinar introduces you to some of the concepts that might interest you.
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by Christopher Jackson 2 Comments

What is Reliability Growth?

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

Sounds simple, right? And it is. Reliability growth literally refers to a process where we improve the reliability of a product, system, or service. But sometimes we find ourselves in situations where it is expected that not only do we understand reliability growth … but measure it. And predict how much it will grow in the future. This is sometimes called Reliability Growth Testing (RGT), Reliability Growth Planning (RGP), or Reliability Growth Prediction. And there are lots of equations and models for all these things. But do these models actually model the ‘real world?’ … can they work for you? … SHOULD they work for you? This webinar introduces you to the topic of reliability growth (both qualitative and quantitative) along with key concepts (like the Duane Failure Pattern) to help you work out if there is (or is not) a place for reliability growth in your organization.
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by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

What is Process Capability Analysis (PCA)?

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

A ‘capable’ process is a really weak term for what we are dealing with here. In short, a process is considered ‘capable’ if it creates products that, in spite of all the unavoidable natural variation in production, still fall within the boundaries of what ‘good’ looks like. Perhaps instead of ‘capable’, we should say ‘amazing’! A ‘capable’ process will essentially create products that have a very, very small chance of being defective. So how do we get here? SPC can help. But how do we measure how ‘capable’ our process is? And can we use this measurement to (for example) work out how many Parts Per Million (PPM) defects you are likely to get? This webinar introduces you to the concept of process capability, including well-known indices like CPK, along with what this means for your process. [Read more…]