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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.

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What is the Weibull Distribution?

What is the Weibull Distribution?

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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What is a ‘Fault Tree’?

What is a ‘Fault Tree’?

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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What do you see in a ‘Probability’ Plot?

What do you see in a ‘Probability’ Plot?

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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Confidence in Reliability

Confidence in Reliability

Confidence in Reliability

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

Reliability is a measure of your product or system. Confidence is a measure of you. But we often forget this. We often subject our new product, system, or service to test after test until it reaches this thing called ‘required statistical confidence.’ But this is often an illusion, which is great! Because if statistical confidence is often not ‘real’ confidence, then we don’t always have to resort to statistics to get confidence. In fact, those of us who exclusively rely on statistics are usually those who lack confidence in the product, system or service and need a security blanket to make them feel OK. This webinar talks about confidence from the perspective of the ‘process owner.’ The design team lead. The CTO. The junior engineer. And how you can get a much healthier version of confidence through the way we design and produce our ‘things’ so that when it comes time to test … we are (justifiably) supremely confident that we will absolutely dominate whatever statistical testing hurdle can be thrown our way. And this sometimes means we don’t need to deal with statistics at all!
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Basic Mathematical Symbols and Stuff

Basic Mathematical Symbols and Stuff

Basic Mathematical Symbols and Stuff

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

OK … we have all been there. We have all sat in some statistical presentation or read a document containing mathematical symbols and statistical hieroglyphics we don’t understand. And we pretend we do understand so that we don’t embarrass ourselves. The people we don’t want to embarrass ourselves in front of usually also pretend to understand those symbols and hieroglyphics. This webinar is a light (re)introduction to common mathematical symbols used in many engineering scenarios … including reliability. [Read more…]