Discrete Distributions

how to use them for fleet planning and spare parts analysis

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

Once we have made something really reliable (or really available) … then comes the part where we have to work out how many of them we need (if they make up a fleet) or how many spare parts we need to keep them running. That is where discrete distributions are really helpful. They assign probabilities to ‘discrete’ random variables. These are random variables that can only have certain specified values. Like whole numbers. For example … the number of failures you expect to see in a mission. Or the number of available systems out of a given fleet size. If this sounds like something that could help you out … see you for this webinar!
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Fundamentals of Interpreting Test Results

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

What role does ‘wishful thinking’ play in interpreting reliability test results? Hopefully, none. A well-designed test will likely provide meaningful results. You and your team may not like the results, yet the results will be clear. [Read more…]

Reliability Life Models …
how do you describe your system dying?

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

OK … that is a little macabre. However, reliability engineers need to ask themselves this question a lot. And there are a lot of wrong answers out there. Some textbooks say that it is ‘commonly accepted’ to use this thing called the exponential distribution. Other books say that if the ‘Weibull shape parameter is 6 or greater … redesign!’ Do you have any idea what this means? If not, this webinar will be a nice little introduction for you!
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9 Ways Reliability is Green Engineering

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

Reliable products are also green. This is a relatively simple argument: If an item is designed and built well, it lasts a long time, thus avoiding landfills. Years ago, when living in northern Bavaria, the apartment had a full bedroom set. The entire set was both beautiful and functional. When asked about the furniture, I learned it was over 300 years old. [Read more…]

Deliberate Reliability Testing

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

Reliability testing is expensive. For that expense, the testing results should provide timely, meaningful results. Results that provide actionable information and insights.

The idea of running a set of standard tests or tests that we ‘commonly run’ in many cases has little value. Each test (experiment) should be conducted for specific reasons related to the current project and current knowledge. [Read more…]

Fault Tolerance

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

There comes a time in everyone’s reliability ‘journey’ when it is either too hard or too expensive to keep perfecting your product, system, or service. Steel can only be ‘so’ pure. Clearances can only be ‘so’ accurate. Surfaces can only be ‘so’ smooth. And software can only be ‘so’ perfect. In fact, it might turn out to be better and cheaper to have two ‘average’ components, with one acting as a backup to the other. The ‘premium’ component might be too expensive or otherwise not as reliable as the backup system. Welcome to fault tolerance! This is where we design products, systems, or services to be able to handle faults, imperfections, deviations, errors, and lots of other things. [Read more…]

7+ Basic Quality Tools

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

I often describe reliability work as we do everything quality does, and we do it over time. Quality folks may disagree. What is not in dispute is that in reliability engineering, we use a lot of different ‘quality’ tools. That is because many quality tools lend themselves to data analysis and problem-solving, [Read more…]

So What is the Root Cause?

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

We all know what the ‘root cause’ is … right? It is the ‘thing’ that caused something bad to happen. The problem is the definition of ‘root cause’ has been abused, misconstrued, re-written, misinterpreted, and all sorts of other things that erode from what it is supposed to be. And by that, I mean it has to be something that we can do something about (and make better). [Read more…]

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Reliability Discussions

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

Only some discussions about reliability go well. Some conversations make it obvious reliability is an afterthought or considered a barrier to creating and shipping products. Other conversations seem to support reliability work, yet really are little more than lip service. Then, there are meaningful conversations that improve the reliability culture within the organization. [Read more…]

How to Make a Decision

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

If nothing changes, then nothing changes. Change happens when we decide to do something. The status quo remains if we decide to do nothing. We make decisions every day. We do it so often that it might seem like a trivial thing to do. But we so often get it wrong. We might be influenced by emotion, prejudice, time pressure, budgetary stress, or ‘mental comfort.’ [Read more…]

Fundamentals of Design for Reliability

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

DFR has been a term in and out of fashion for some time—one of the many DFX type programs. DFR, unlike some of the other Design for X programs, has to exist within the overall culture of the organization to be successful. The premise that design occurs at the point of decision implies that each design may have the appropriate information to consider the decision’s impact on reliability performance properly. [Read more…]

10 Reasons to do FMEAs

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

Everyone knows why we do reliability, and reliability things like FMEAs. Customer experience. Organization reputation. Reduced warranty claims 10 years from now. But these are boring reasons that really don’t motivate me to take FMEAs 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 will give me a ‘gold star’ on my next performance appraisal? Right? Wrong! [Read more…]

 How to Plan an ALT

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

The more you understand the failure mechanisms, the easier it is to design an accelerated life test (ALT). Yet, we often do not have all the information we would like to draft an ALT. So, what do we do then?
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Fixing the Irrelevance of Reliability in Your Organization: Just ask ‘why’

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

There are so many books on leadership, management, more leadership, reliability, quality, customer first, even more leadership, et cetera. But there remains a common refrain I hear repeatedly from reliability engineers struggling to make a difference: ‘Reliability is just not relevant to my organization.’ There is a common thread to this common refrain – we only hear it from people who work in organizations that don’t have a clear understanding of ‘why’ they are doing what they do.

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Reliability Making Money — Case Study of just looking at a Weibull plot

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

Reliability engineers LOVE Weibull plots. They often make sense out of a bunch of seemingly random points. Or at least we feel like they make sense. Anything that turns a bunch of random points into a straight line is automatically making sense … right? Wrong. It is up to us as reliability engineers to look at Weibull plots and work out what is going on. [Read more…]