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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Selecting a Reliability Method

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

A key element of reliability engineering is doing the right thing at the right time. When running an experiment or test, conducting an assessment, or performing an analysis, the method we use must fit the situation. Being busy does not add value; getting meaningful results does. [Read more…]

Where does the Bell Curve come from?

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

Everyone has heard of the ‘bell curve.’ Sports show hosts, teachers, scientists, and a bunch of other people routinely use the term ‘bell curve’ to describe uncertainty. But do you know where it comes from? It is not just a ‘pretty shape’ that seems to work, It comes from a really cool physical phenomena that we find everywhere. So, the ‘bell curve’ naturally aligns with how our primitive human brain often tries to characterize or visualize uncertainty. The other really cool thing about the bell curve (and lots of other curves that look like bells) is that if we find it in our reliability data, it automatically tells us where to look in order to improve reliability. If you want a basic introduction to one of the most common statistical concepts with NO EQUATIONS … this is the webinar for you!
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Building a Reliability Plan

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

This is an overview of the six steps to achieve high reliability from Carl and Fred’s book. Creating and executing a reliability plan that assists the team in designing, manufacturing, and supporting meeting reliability objectives takes effort. Let’s discuss the details of that effort so that you can focus on the critical steps. [Read more…]

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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The State of Reliability Education

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

We have many options to learn reliability engineering—books, magazines, newsletters, conferences, seminars, etc. We have options. Some options are better than others, depending on what you want to know. Likewise, some options are better than others, depending on what you want to share.

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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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Design for Reliability – Stressors

podcast episode with speaker Michael Pfeifer

Any product is a collection of materials that have been engineered, shaped, and modified to become components and joints (e.g., weld and braze joints). The materials can degrade due to exposure to use conditions – steel screws corrode when exposed to water, some plastics become brittle when exposed to sunlight, and coatings on surfaces can wear away.

Components and joints will stop functioning as required if their materials degrade too much. This is a problem if it reduces or loses product performance before the end of a product’s expected life.

Identifying the conditions to which materials are exposed and selecting materials that can withstand the exposure are critical parts of designing products that have good reliability.

During this event, I will discuss identifying the conditions that can cause materials to degrade. [Read more…]

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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Reliability Occurs at the Point of Decision

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

The reliability performance of a product or system exists because the decisions that occur during the creation of the product establish how well an item will survive without failure. The choice of material, finish, or technologies, along with all the other decisions involved, define how well a product performs, including its reliability. [Read more…]

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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Focus on Failure Mechanisms

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

In my opinion, as I do not know if this is true or not, every product or system failure has a cause. Causes are not exactly the same as what we call ‘failure mechanisms’, yet they are related in many cases. One more term to consider is ‘failure mode’, which refers to the symptoms or results of a failure. [Read more…]

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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Being a Great Reliability Engineer

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

What is it that makes the difference between good and great related to reliability engineers? What is the magic element that separates those who can carry out tasks such as facilitating an FMEA or designing and analyzing an ALT from those who impact an organization’s culture? A good impact that improves the organization’s ability to create reliable products.

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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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