Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Chris and Fred discussing another question from a listener based on ‘as low as reasonably practicable’ or ALARP. This is used a lot in risk management and analysis … but what is it?
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Chris and Fred discussing service reliability based on a listener question where we don’t just look at reliability as it applies to an item, product or device. Instead … we look at ‘reliability of a service’ … or system, … or process. How can this help a farmer who is trying to work out how to best supply water to his cattle?
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Chris and Fred discuss warning signs … especially those that revolve around culture … are often ignored. And it takes a ‘disaster’ or ‘catastrophe’ to do something about this. Why is this?
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Chris and Fred discuss the MTBF … and if and when it can be used … sometimes in reliability engineering. We know that the MTBF is one of the most chronically overused (and misused) so-called ‘reliability’ metrics. But is there scope for it to be used … sometimes?
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Chris and Fred discuss the whole idea of ‘demonstration testing’ … and how it may be ‘chronically’ overused or at least misunderstood. Heard of ‘demonstration testing’ and need to learn more?
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Chris and Fred discuss some of the issues you face when selecting a (potentially incorrect) model. And how much uncertainty still remains when you do. Hate statistics … but need a nice and easy introduction to this sort of stuff?
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Chris and Fred discuss the term ‘failure’ … and should we use it?
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Chris and Fred discuss what it means to be ‘wrapped around the axle.’ It is one of those perfect analogies … especially for people who fall for imperfect analogies! Like that assuming that all we have to do is wait for ‘early failures’ to disappear before we get into to the ‘bottom part of the bathtub curve’ … really?
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Chris and Kirk discuss how militaries go about making and getting reliable stuff. And this is sometimes more successful than others …
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Chris and Carl ask each other … by how much do FMEAs improve reliability? … or reduce failure?
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Chris and Fred ask each other ‘what makes a good design review?’ This is a great question. Reliability engineering can help! (… click here to read an article about this). If you want to learn more – listen to this podcast!
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Chris and Fred discuss the difference between ‘making’ and ‘checking’ reliability. And there is a difference. This podcast follows on from Chris’s article about a US Department of Defense (DoD) quick reference guide on a ‘Reliability and Maintainability Engineering Body of Knowledge.’ The problem with this document was it was all about ‘checking’ reliability – and not enough ‘making’ reliability.
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Chris and Fred discuss this thing called ‘Wright’s Law’ which is a really fascinating way of describing how things improve as we create more of them. And why is this relevant for reliability engineering? Does ‘reliability growth’ ring a bell?
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Chris and Fred discuss how important maintenance culture is – especially when it comes to safety-critical systems. Like ‘cable cars’ used to transport people up ski slopes. But unfortunately (like the recent accident that occurred in Italy that resulted in 14 deaths) toxic maintenance culture can lead to disastrous consequences. And this tends to happen across the world on a regular basis. Why does this happen?
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Chris and Fred discuss what ‘distribution parameters’ mean when it comes to random processes. Specifically failure random processes. This is an interesting podcast in response to a question from one of our listeners – which are podcasts we love!
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