Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

You are here: Home / Archives for Christopher Jackson

Christopher Jackson — Thought Leader

Author of Reliability in Emerging Technology, multiple books, co-host on Speaking of Reliability, and speaker in the Accendo Reliability Webinar Series.


This author's archive lists contributions of articles and episodes.

by Leave a Comment

Reliability Life Models

Reliability Life Models

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!
[Read more…]

by Leave a Comment

SOR 678 Wrapped Around the Axle

SOR 678 Wrapped Around the Axle

Wrapped Around the Axle

Abstract

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?
ᐅ Play Episode

by Leave a Comment

Routine Things Risk Becoming Routine

Routine Things Risk Becoming Routine

One of my more unfortunate memories of my early military career is the death of a soldier on a training exercise. I was posted to a place very close to the equator … along with the heat and humidity that came with it. The soldier who died suffered from heat stroke, brought on by dehydration. And when we looked back on what went wrong, a key issue was that the training exercise risk assessment was ‘word for word’ identical to previous risk assessments when it came to managing heat related illnesses.

[Read more…]

by Leave a Comment

When people do right – does the right thing happen?

When people do right – does the right thing happen?

Organizations are all about ‘success.’ Being ‘successful.’ Which can many different things to many different people. ‘Success’ is not simply the ‘antithesis of failure.’ One could argue that ‘mediocrity’ in many cases is accepted as the antithesis of ‘failure.’ ‘Mediocrity’ is hardly the same as ‘success.’

Organizational success means that a lot of different people need to be doing lots of very different, but very important things. And this often means things that can go unnoticed. The ‘one percenters.’ Getting things done right the first time. 

[Read more…]

by Leave a Comment

SOR 672 Make or Check Reliability

SOR 672 Make or Check Reliability

Make or Check Reliability

Abstract

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.
ᐅ Play Episode

by Leave a Comment

Fault Tolerance

Fault Tolerance

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…]

by Leave a Comment

Reliability happens when you become impatient and selfish

Reliability happens when you become impatient and selfish

I often start teaching my reliability engineering courses … by focusing on other reliability engineering courses. Why? Because they exemplify what is wrong with how most ‘reliability experts’ go about convincing others to take reliability seriously.

A typical reliability engineering course will start with images of disaster. A Chernobyl here. A Fukushima there. A crashed airplane. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Lots of other atrocities that happen when we don’t do reliability engineering properly.

[Read more…]