The Words We Use Matter

Abstract

Chris and Fred discuss the different words we often use (and misuse) in reliability engineering. ‘Reliability’ has been used for hundreds of years to describe different concepts of ruggedness, robustness, strength, timeliness, trustworthiness and so on. But – reliability has a specific definition within reliability engineering. There are plenty of other examples of how words we use in reliability engineering can have multiple meanings – even when we think they don’t!
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Calculating Acceleration Factor

Abstract

Chris and Fred discuss accelerated testing – and how we come up with acceleration factors. Accelerated testing is great! It allows us to compress an entire lifecycle into a short test duration for us to quickly understand the reliability characteristics of our system … ONLY if we know what we are doing. Keen to learn more?
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Effort versus Outcomes

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Chris and Fred discuss what it means to focus on ‘effort’ instead of ‘outcomes.’ We often think we focus on outcomes only … but how many people ‘get by’ simply by being ‘seen’ around the office, looking busy when there, and otherwise being friendly to everyone? They always volunteer to be part of a team, do some of the ‘less glamorous’ tasks, and otherwise be ‘part of something.’ But is this person actually valuable? (… harsh as the question sounds).
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3 Perspectives for Fault Tree Analysis

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Chris and Fred discussing the 3 perspectives of Fault Tree Analysis or FTA. What … there are 3 perspectives? … what are perspectives when it comes to FTA?
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Hints to Have a Proactive Reliability Program

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Chris and Fred discuss ‘proactive’ reliability engineering … and trying to get out of being ‘reactive.’ Some entire organizations are structure around waiting for the catastrophe to happen before we fix it. So changing perspectives can be challenging.
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Reliability Starts at the Top

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Chris and Fred discuss how reliability starts at the top of every organization. And by that, we mean … leadership. What does that mean? How can the CEO be more important for reliability performance than the reliability engineer with decades of experience and post-graduate qualifications?
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Extrapolation and Sample Sizes

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Chris and Fred discuss (essentially) how many ‘things’ you need to see to know enough about those ‘things.’ We see this conundrum across all sorts of fields of study. How many kangaroos do I need to capture and weigh to get a good understanding of the entire population’s typical weight? Delete kangaroo and insert whatever thing matters to you.
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Accelerated Testing Assumptions

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Chris and Fred discuss accelerated testing. Accelerated testing is great for getting lots of information in a short period of time. You can compress a lot of ‘real-time’ life into a really small amount of testing. But how do you do it right? You need to understand the underlying physics of failure to work out how the compression of time works.
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Deterministic versus Probabilistic

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Chris and Fred discuss what it means to be ‘deterministic’ versus ‘probabilistic’ … and what that means for reliability engineering. Know what these words mean and want to learn more? Don’t know what these words mean and want to understand how they could help reliability engineering? Listen to this podcast.
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The Hunt for Reliability Training

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Chris and Fred discuss how you go about ‘hunting’ reliability training. And we do mean ‘hunt.’
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How to Become a Reliability Engineering Consultant

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Chris and Fred discuss how to become a reliability engineering consultant. This is a very natural question for a lot of us. It might be easy to visualize what you want to achieve. But it can be daunting to get there.
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How Reliable Does My System Need to Be?

Abstract

Chris and Fred discuss how you go about setting a reliability goal. We got asked by someone who was responsible for a ‘complex’ system …

How reliable does our system need to be?

Unfortunately … you need to tell us that! Hopefully this webinar will help you start asking the right question to work it out for yourself.
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Assessing Reliability Courses

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Chris and Fred discuss what you need to think about when selecting your next reliability engineering course. What course do you need to do to become a better engineer (and more valuable to your organization)?
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Statistics and Reliability

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Chris and Fred discuss what came first … reliability or statistics? Reliability of course! There are plenty of organizations that focus on baking reliability into designs without the need for statistics. But statistics are a part of reliability engineering. So what is the relationship between the two? Listen to this podcast to learn more.
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The Problem with Textbooks

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Chris and Fred discuss the apparent differences between what you find in textbooks and what you are supposed to do when it comes to good reliability engineering.
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